At age 51, Kate Leigh Cutler ’91, Interior Design, graduated Moore and was ready to take on the world.

Thirty years prior to attending Moore, after taking some college classes, Cutler started a flower design business creating arrangements for weddings, centerpieces -- even competing in national competitions.

Her arrangements caught the eye of a friend who worked in the marketing department at Lenox Corporation, a market leader in quality tabletop, giftware and collectibles. Cutler was invited to design the Lenox Colonial Christmas Wreath Plate series from 1981 - 1993. Each plate’s design included a Christmas wreath made with natural materials that were native to the 13 original colonies. Moore has enjoyed a longtime relationship with Lenox, who has hired many Moore students to serve as professional designers and design interns.

“It really floated my boat for a time,” Cutler said. But after reading the best-selling book What Color Is My Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles -- a practical manual for job hunters and career seekers -- she realized that interior design was her true passion. She decided to go back to school to complete her bachelor’s degree and enrolled at Moore.

Cutler said she chose Moore because she found the all-women environment to be appealing, comfortable and attractive.

Though she didn’t fit the demographics of a typical college student, she connected easily with the students in her classes.

“I loved every minute of it,” Cutler said. Though she majored in Interior Design, she quickly discovered her voice as a fine artist after taking a few classes and getting positive feedback from faculty.

After graduating with her Interior Design degree, Cutler took freelance work to pay the bills. She also started pursuing her passion – mainly painting watercolors of interiors and exteriors of homes out of her garage.

One of her freelance projects involved doing watercolor pieces for Continental Airlines. She also helped design invitations for inaugural flights (when new airplanes fly) and lectured at conferences about how to incorporate art in the engineering environment. She ended up freelancing for Continental for five years.

“My art and my Moore training really came together,” Cutler said.

Today, Cutler is a full-time painter. She paints emotionally-charged waterscapes from her home studio in Bayhead, NJ and keeps busy teaching art classes, exhibiting her work, entering competitions and doing private commissions. She recently donated a painting of a local historic boat at an auction to restore her church. The painting, which sold for $10,000, is now hanging in the church.

With a busy year behind her, future projects are on hold for a moment as Cutler re-organizes her studio, but this doesn’t mean she will slow down. She is asked all the time how she manages to do it all and her response is the same: “It’s exhilarating. It’s my life. It’s probably more overwhelming if one sees it written down, but I am better under pressure and if I have a goal or purpose.”

Romero, adjunct faculty for both graduate programs, already documents and supports artist communities of color across the country that are often excluded from historical narratives and exhibitions. It is that exclusion due to race and sexuality that has defined his purpose. “My agenda is to create a broader arts landscape that feels more like me,” Romero said.

Romero grew up in Buda, Texas, a small rural town with limited access to the arts. His life now is in sharp contrast to his early years. He holds a BA in Art History from Texas State University and a MFA in Performance from the Art Institute of Chicago. His home base is in Chicago as he travels across the country for his curatorial projects. He recently served as a guest critic for the MFA in Studio Art program critiques in December.

Romero is a Curatorial Fellow at Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia through the end of March 2015, where he is executing a series called “May I say a few words?,” consisting of five public programs that look at the political potential of the voice and particularly how it relates to the LGBT and communities of color. The series offers a wide spectrum of artists and content ranging from spoken word to a film and dancing. In the spring of 2014, Romero, along with collaborators J. Soto and Sara Black, brought the traveling exhibition "Living as Form" to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and also co-curated a month-long performance festival in Chicago that included artists reinterpreting archives of former active artists.

Romero’s connection to Moore stems from an existing working relationship with Daniel Tucker, Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Manager in Social and Studio Practices, which encompasses the MFA degrees in both Studio Art and Community Practice and the MA in Art and Social Engagement. The two collaborated on socially-based art projects in Chicago in the past. With the new programs in development he asked Romero, who has a history of teaching this subject matter, to join the faculty.

Romero’s class at Moore, “Examining Cultures: Place and Analysis,” will cover race and social class in relationship to city and place. Romero says the class, which is required, will offer a framework for thinking about issues race and economics within specific geographic contexts. An online class, he will teach it from his home in Chicago. Romero believes having the class online will allow the students to tie the concepts of the course to their own communities.

To some, it may appear that “art and social engagement” is a new trend, but Romero disagrees. He believes it has deep historical roots.

“There’s a deep legacy within communities of people doing this kind of work in their neighborhoods.,” Romero said, “Now it’s really more of a question of what to do as institutions turn towards this type of community engagement. Most museums are hiring directors of community engagement and are building curricula around how to interact with neighbors and community organizations within the context of art. This is a large part of the new program at Moore.”

His purpose for the class is simple but profound: He wants his students to remain open, curious, and to think critically. “I want to create more ethical artist professionals who can facilitate interactions between major institutions, neighborhoods and under-resourced communities in a meaningful way.”

The MA in Social Engagement is focused on the study of socially- based art practices grounded in the theoretical discovery and critical examination of community-based works within a social context. Candidates will work collaboratively to define intersections of contemporary art and society.

The MFA in Community Practice approaches art-making within the context of social practice in the public sphere. Candidates will work in a “learning hub” to learn the differences between solo practice and working within groups to create art as they acquire a refined understanding of the challenges and opportunities of creating project-based public work.

Justine Yeagle ‘09 Interior Design, leaves her creative imprint all over the world.

As a project manager at Tricarico Architecture and Design PC, an architecture and design firm in northern New Jersey, Yeagle works with major retailers on high-profile projects across America and most recently in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The company specializes in Specialty Retail, Corporate Interiors, Automotive, Commercial, Beauty & Wellness and Hospitality & Restaurants.

Yeagle’s favorite project in her three and a half years on the job is the Robert Graham store at NorthPark Mall in Dallas, Texas. There, she collaborated with her best friend and co-worker in creating new merchandise fixtures for the store. The client wanted to represent Texas without the cliched “cowboy” feel. Yeagle and her partner researched the state’s history and drew inspiration from there. The pair combined elements from the state’s slogan, “Rising Star,” Dallas’ Six Flags theme park and oil rigs to create the fixtures.

“My favorite part of working in retail is seeing how the fixtures and merchandise define a space,” Yeagle said.

She credits Margaret Leahy, former faculty member in Interior Design, for running a “fantastic” program that developed the conceptual design skills she uses every day. She does have one regret -- she wishes she had taken the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) course. Her advice to students: “Do not pass up an opportunity to better yourself.”

Yeagle said her AutoCAD skills, honed at Moore, helped her land three internships. While a student at Moore, Yeagle interned at John Kelly Interior Design in Philadelphia and continued the internship for about a year after graduation and the summer before her senior year, Yeagle also interned at TJD Architects in Bridgeton, New Jersey. The summer after graduation, Yeagle interned at AC Moore in Berlin, New Jersey, which eventually led to her first job. She was later recruited to join Tricarico from her former boss at AC Moore.

Carrie Morrissey ‘04 Fashion Design, hasn’t slept in days. That’s because she is gearing up for Market Week, the week after New York Fashion Week in February where she will be presenting her jewelry collection.

Morrissey is the owner and designer behind I Still Love You NYC (ISLYNYC), a jewelry line that is garnering international attention. Her hand-crafted acrylic pieces can be seen everywhere from the pages of Vogue and other magazines to gracing the bodies of recording artists Iggy Azalea and Meghan Trainor.

Morrissey has shown at New York Fashion Week in the past, collaborating with DKNY. Many of ISLY’s pieces are designed to match DKNY’s line, or are re-purposed to do so. She is currently working on her own collection, “BARBIE DYSMORPHIA,” featuring around 60 new pieces of jewelry, visors and belts for Market Week, the main wholesale purchasing time of each season following Fashion Week.

In 2014, DKNY learned of ISLY through International Playground, a showroom in Soho that handles sales for ISLY. The fashion director at DKNY contacted Morrissey suggesting a co-brand collaboration. She could barely contain her excitement.

“I read the email on my phone and threw the phone across the room I was so excited,” she said. Still, Morrissey remains humble, designing and cutting each individual piece of jewelry with her laser cutter. It was only a year and a half ago when she invited eight people over to her apartment, including her mother, to help fulfill a thousand-piece order. Now, she has a new studio space, has hired a full-time production assistant and still finds it “trippy” when people show interest in her work.

ISLYNYC is now sold in all of the DKNY flagship stores at seven locations in the United States and two in the United Kingdom. One can also find ISLY merchandise in boutique shops in New York City, such as Patricia Field and International Playground, as well as domestically in Nordstrom's and Nasty Gal. Morrissey also has a large fan base internationally.

Morrissey graduated from Moore in 2004 with a BFA in Fashion Design. She worked several jobs in the industry while in Philadelphia. After moving to New York City, she was hired as a Web Product Data Management Specialist at Fishman and Tobin Inc., a kidswear brand specialist. But the corporate world wasn’t fulfilling her creative needs, which kept her up late at night creating things. Morrissey decided to follow her heart. She created ISLYNYC in 2010 as a clothing line. It wasn’t until 2013 that ISLY was noticed for its laser- cut acrylic jewelry. By 2013, ISLY phased out clothing to focus solely on jewelry.

Morrissey is currently positioning herself to work more with celebrity stylists and wants to be “the brand choice” for custom pieces. A pair of ISLY “sports icon earrings,” one of Morrissey’s favorite pieces, have been worn by actress Shay Mitchell and have been featured in numerous magazines. Another pair of ISLY earrings are featured on a back-up dancer in Beyonce’s new music video for her song, “7/11.”

ISLY’s jewelry is fun, bold, and pushes boundaries. Morrissey believes that ISLY also sets itself apart because of her fashion background, which allows her pieces to be more “conceptual and esoteric.”

Morrissey said she gained a solid knowledge of the fashion industry through studio design classes at Moore that prepared her for three different internships and her career. Morrissey is a firm believer that one should be in the industry for a while before branching out independently. It wasn’t until years later that she took business classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she learned how to create a business plan.

Morrissey credits Moore not only for preparing her for the fashion industry but for something that has proven to be just as empowering -- the relationships she built with other Moore graduates. “I really loved that Moore was a girls school,” she said, “It was something I didn’t think I’d be that in to at first, but I forged some of the best friendships. It’s thrilling to watch your friends succeed and it’s something that has always made me really happy.”

Morrissey plans to attend Moore’s 2015 Spring Fashion Show, An Evening at the Barnes, to be held on Saturday, May 16 at 8 pm at The Barnes Foundation. One of her interns, Tanya Murray, will be showing her senior collection. Visit here to learn more about the fashion show and to purchase tickets.

Brittany Banks could be the poster child for kick-starting a new career by continuing her education.

Banks, 26, completed her first Digital Photography class through Moore’s Continuing Educationprogram last semester. When she began the 10-week program, she didn’t know how to use a camera. She had never tried Photoshop. All she had was an interest in photography.

But thanks to the small class size, her ambition and help from her teacher, Leigh Van Duzer, Banks completed 11 professional photo shoots through the class and began promoting her work on social media. This resulted in even more work. Now, Banks is a full-time photographer with her own business, Brittany Banks Photography.

“The CE program totally changed my life,” Banks said. “It is possible to start a new career if you put your mind to it, focus on the goal and enjoy what you do. I’m a photographer who loves to create an image in my head and bring it to life through the lens of my camera.”

Banks, who was born and raised in Reading, PA, graduated high school in 2007 and took college classes to become a Certified Nursing Assistant. She then spent four years working at a nursing home in the Shillington, PA area, but realized it wasn’t the right career. At 23, she moved to Philadelphia for a new start. She was bartending to pay the bills when she met and married her husband, Ryan, and soon became pregnant with their daughter, Brielle, now eight months old.

While she was pregnant, Banks stopped working. But after giving birth in May, she was enamored with her daughter and spent a lot of time taking photos of Brielle on her cell phone camera and posting them on social media.

“My husband said to me, ‘You spend a lot of time filtering your pictures and posting them. If you like photography so much, you should consider being a professional instead of doing it for free,’” she said.

In September, Ryan Banks bought his wife her first camera, a Canon T5i Rebel, an external flash and an additional lens as an anniversary present. And he recommended that she take a photography class.

As a child, Ryan Banks had taken summer classes in still life and animation at Moore and suggested his wife check out the CE program. The program offers a flexible schedule of night classes and certificate programs for men and women. Banks also liked that Moore was open early and closed late, giving her the option to come in on days she didn’t have class to work on editing.

“I felt really comfortable at Moore,” Banks said. “I didn’t want to be a full-time student because my daughter was young. I needed a class that was one day a week, and I liked that there was the option to take it without credit, which is what I wanted.”

The first day of class, Banks only knew how to push the button on the camera to take a photo. “The first class I learned so much and I wrote everything down in addition to the handouts,” she said. “They taught us every function on the camera, how to use Photoshop and edit pictures, and we had homework each week.”

As she began to shoot more photos, both as homework assignments and on her own, she started lining up photo shoots with her friends’ young children. Once she posted the photos on Facebook and Instagram, many more people began messaging her requesting photo shoots.

“Once I got a few clients, I started feeling like a professional – you don’t just have to have a degree,” she said. “By the time I finished the class in December (2014), I had a set price for photo shoots. I'm starting to book even more assignments through a new Facebook business page I set up (Brittany Banks Photography)."

Today, Banks books at least one or two photo shoots per week and is currently offering Valentine’s Day photo shoots. Her specialty is babies and children, but she also shoots events like engagements, birthday parties and weddings.

Banks credits Van Duzer and Moore for giving her the support and encouragement to start her own business.

“There were only a few people in the class so we received a lot of personalized attention,” she said. She plans to take another photography class at Moore and encourages others to pursue their dreams.

“It was easier for me to start my own business,” she said. “Photography is something I love and have a passion for, and I have a good eye for it. I can create my own schedule, which is great.”

When Stephen Wood learned that Moore had launched an all women’s gaming program, he couldn’t wait to get on board.

At the time, he was teaching Communication Arts and Game Design at Sanford-Brown College, a vocational school in Egan, Minnesota. But the opportunity to teach at Moore and help build up the new Interactive & Motion Arts major was too good to pass up.

“I think it’s really important to close the gender gap in that industry and I thought this was a great venue to do that,” Wood said. “The video game and technology industry has been seen as a male interest for the past 20 years. It has been really difficult for women to break into the industry. But now that women are more interested in gaming and technology and are having a voice – it’s starting to swell.”

Wood, Instructor of Interactive & Motion Arts, just completed his first semester at the College and so far, he is very impressed with his tight-knit group of students. The IMA program, which launched in 2013, is designed for women who want to pursue careers as visual artists in the fields of animation, game art and mobile media design.

“We have ten sophomores right now (in the program) and lots of Illustration students minor in it,” he said. “The students work hard, are dedicated and passionate. Their work is way above what I’ve seen at other schools with students at the same level. They push each other really hard.”

With the new IMA major – Moore’s tenth major – the College continues to create a dynamic technological campus. Wood mentions the recently-built sound room (where students can do sound recording and voice acting) as an example.

“Once we build a library of equipment that will be great,” he said. “I’m also looking forward to placing the students in internships in the summer of 2016.”

But before the summer, Wood will be instrumental in helping to coordinate the second year of a day-long gaming event at Moore, Game Changers: Women Making Games on March 4, 2015 from 6 – 8 pm at the College. The event is FREE and open to the public.

Moderated by Jessica Hara Campbell, Game Changers will explore the role of women in the game art and mobile industry drawn from the experience of the speakers. Panelists include female gamers Alison Carrier, Katy Farina and Casey Uhelski.

The launch of the Interactive & Motion Arts major coincides with Philadelphia’s continued growth as a hotbed for game-making. With the new major, Moore hopes to maintain its leadership role in educating women for careers in the arts, and to change and grow with new industries.

The United States has the largest video games market in the world in terms of revenue and total industry employees, statistics show. In 2004, the U.S. game industry as a whole was worth $10.3 billion, Wood said. U.S. gaming revenue was estimated to be $20.5 billion in 2014.

“There are a lot of game studios who are looking to open here,” Wood said. “It’s a growing industry in Philadelphia. ‘Interactive’ is already a part of everyone’s lives. It’s not going away. It’s cemented into the mainstream.”

Wood earned his BFA in Illustration from Minneapolis College of Art & Design and his MFA in Illustration with a focus in Digital Illustration from Savannah College of Art & Design. He has professionally worked at 5th Planet Games as well as working for the past six years as a freelance artist in the hobby and casual games industry. His work has been in board games, card games, Facebook games, and mobile games.

“I’ve always loved the Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres and that is what I specialize in my work,” Wood said. “I left college with teaching in mind and that is why I pursued graduate school, but I also wanted to illustrate and paint for the games I enjoyed playing as a teenager, and still do. I don’t think I will ever get tired of painting in these genres.”

For one thing, he’s not an artist. His college degrees are in accounting and management information systems. He writes computer literacy textbooks. And he’s a certified public accountant.

But with Moore’s career-focused education and the growing emphasis on entrepreneurship, Evans fills an ever important role at the College.

As adjunct faculty of Liberal Arts, he teaches two classes - Entrepreneurship and Accounting - to business minors and students who take the classes as electives. Many of the students hope to open their own businesses.

“There are so many opportunities now because of technology and getting your message out through social media and websites like Etsy,” Evans said. “It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur.”

The Entrepreneurship class is designed to teach students how to write a business plan, get financing and launch their own business. Even if they work for someone else, employers today expect employees to think like entrepreneurs, Evans said. The same applies to the Accounting class.

“If you’re running your own business, you’ll probably hire an accountant,” he said. “But you need to know how to converse intelligently with the accountant and understand what they’re saying. We’re mostly teaching students the basic stuff.”

Evans encounters a wide range of experience levels throughout the business minor. “Some high schools will run all their students through a personal finance class, but a lot won’t,” he said. “Some of my students are very business literate, especially if their families own their own businesses. Others aren’t.”

Evans has taught computer literacy and business classes at many institutions, including Montgomery County Community College and Manor College in Jenkintown. But he really enjoys teaching art students. Recent statistics show that more than 30 percent of Moore alumnae have established their own art and design businesses.

“The students at Moore are very enthusiastic and passionate about their major,” he said. “Students who take the business courses want to be there and want to learn. I always have students do presentations in the Entrepreneur class and they are very good. The students are used to defending their work and getting critiqued so they do a good job. That is going to be really important out in the business world.”

The importance of business planning to successful careers in the arts is underscored by the new Emerging Entrepreneur’s Business Plan Prize, which will be awarded to a Moore student at Commencement on May 17, 2015.

Sponsored by Your Part-Time Controller, LLC and CEO Eric Fraint with an additional $2,000 from Evans, the $4,000 prize will bring greater visibility to YPTC’s partnerships with non-profit arts organizations and underscore Moore’s commitment to educating students for careers and leadership in art and design. A $500 prize will be given to the runner-up.

The competition is open to any senior who has successfully completed Evans’ fall semester Entrepreneurship class during their studies. Applicants must submit a business plan for an idea they plan to launch after graduation. Evans will serve as an advisor for students applying for the prize. The Locks Career Center will facilitate the project and manage the competition. Final business plans and visual presentations are due March 16, 2015.

Fraint said his company has made a three-year commitment to the prize.

“I am very pleased that our firm, Your Part-Time Controller, is able to sponsor the Emerging Entrepreneur’s Business Plan Prize at Moore College,” he said. “What better way for Moore students to learn the financial skills they will need to be successful than by creating a business plan.”

A selected team of readers will review the business plans and select a group of top finalists who will present their plan to a panel of jurors (including Fraint) and the campus in April or May. Evans will not be judging the prize.

“Half a dozen students have already spoken to me with interest in the prize,” Evans said. “I think it’s a great opportunity. Usually colleges with business majors offer a prize like this, not art schools. A lot of our students want to open their own business. This will give them a little incentive and a leg up.”

Evans earned his undergraduate degree in Accounting from Rider University and his Master’s degree in Management Information Systems from Drexel University.

He was in finance for 18 years before transitioning to information systems and computer support, most recently as Director of Finance and Information Systems at Adis International in Langhorne, PA. He eventually decided to go into education, teaching computer sciences courses while serving as Director of Computer Science at Montgomery County Community College.

While there, he was approached by Pearson Publishing to write a computer literacy textbook with a few co-authors. Today, Technology in Action is the best-selling computer concepts book at the collegiate level in the United States. The 12th edition is about to be published. Evans has authored numerous publications, given presentations and sat on committees across the country dealing with computer literacy.

Evans first learned of Moore through faculty member Melanie McCleod, who worked for him at Montgomery College and was already teaching business classes at Moore. When the College increased the number of business classes, they needed an additional instructor, so McCleod recommended Evans.

“I showed up for the first night of class and there were 25 women sitting in front of me,” he said. “I didn’t know much about Moore so I said, `where are the guys?’ They all started laughing. I didn’t know it was an all-women’s school.”

Now that he has been here several years, Evans said he appreciates the College’s small classes and intimate environment. “It’s good for students and teachers and there’s more on-on-one time, which is important with entrepreneurship.”

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Moore College of Art & Design educates students for careers in art and design. Founded in 1848, Moore is the nation's first and only women's visual arts college. Moore's career-focused environment and professionally active faculty form a dynamic community in the heart of Philadelphia's cultural district. The College offers ten Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees for women and since 2009, five coeducational Graduate Studies programs. In addition, Moore provides many valuable opportunities in the arts through The Galleries at Moore; Continuing Education programs for professional adults; the acclaimed Youth Programs for young people grades 1-12, which was founded in 1921; The Art Shop and Sculpture Park. For more information about Moore, visit www.moore.edu.

Moore faculty member and muralist David Guinn’s artwork can be seen all over Philadelphia and as far away as Jordan.

Guinn, a Moore faculty member and artist based in Philadelphia, has painted over 30 large scale public murals since 1998 throughout the city, as well as in New York City, Washington, DC. and Montreal, Canada.

His work has been noted in books, newspapers, magazines and on television and radio, including TheNew York Times, Wall Street Journal and Spin magazine. His smaller scale paintings have been shown in galleries and museums, including The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Woodmere Art Museum and The Galleries at Moore.

Guinn is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the prestigious Knight Arts Challenge 2013, an Independence Foundation Fellowship and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship in the Arts.

Guinn has been an adjunct professor in Fine Arts at Moore since 2011. In the past, he has taught Mural Painting and Advanced Painting. He has also taught at Philadelphia Mural Arts and been a guest lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia University, the University of the Arts and Johnson State College in Vermont. In 2012, Guinn founded Freewall, an outdoor space at 1214 Sansom Street in Philadelphia, dedicated to promoting innovative mural art.

A graduate of Columbia University, Guinn was originally trained as an architect, mainly in pursuit of a more practical career path. But shortly after graduating in 1994, he moved back to Philadelphia and saw what the Mural Arts Program was doing – and that changed his career path. “I was excited and saw it [mural painting] as an intersection of painting and architecture where you could work in a public space and work at an architectural scale, but have some of the structure and accountability of a traditional job.” Guinn said. “It also had this creative freedom that painting gives you.”

Guinn sought out opportunities for work, connecting with a friend who did faux finishing and interior murals in people’s homes. The friend was commissioned to create a mural through the Mural Arts Program and asked Guinn to assist.

“Through him, I met Jane Golden [Executive Director of the Mural Arts Program] and I said, ‘this is really what I want to do’,” he said. “I liked the public nature and there was even more freedom to have a more personal voice in the Mural Arts Program.”

Guinn got his start as an assistant with several different artists. But he got his big break when an artist dropped out of a mural project at 10th and Bainbridge, a high-profile commission. Golden asked him to take over the project.

“She knew that the subject matter that I was interested in - architectural, cityscapes, would fit at this site,” he said. “And because that project was a success and had a lot of visibility, they continued to offer me more projects.”

Guinn recently completed a mural on the side of a house at 4th and Manton Streets next to the Manton Street Community Garden. The mural was dedicated on November 15, 2014. He is also painting a mural on fabric in his studio to be installed in the Spring on the wall above the Shake Shack on 20th and Sansom Streets. This year, he even painted a mural in Amman, Jordan.

“There was a mural festival there where they invited eight international muralists and Jordanian artists,” Guinn said. “The festival was two weeks and painting was eight days. The best part was they had Jordanian college students work on the mural with me and there was a great cultural exchange.”

Guinn said the murals that best suit him are those done by a small group of people, where you can get close enough to appreciate the details but also see the big picture from a distance. The largest mural he ever painted was about 200 feet long and 30 feet high. About 1,000 square feet is a typical mural. Depending on the project, it can take two weeks to two months to complete a mural.

“My murals usually have some type of landscape reference , but I’m going for creating a space for the passerby to enter in their mind and find a restful, contemplative space, somewhere they can go into and explore,” he said.

Guinn said he is lucky to be able to make a living doing what he loves, while teaching on the side.

“There’s something really thrilling about making this big painting outside,” he said. “It’s pretty social and you meet a lot of people. You’re always at a new place. You never know what’s going to happen on any given day. It’s exciting when you get into the zone and you’re seeing this big artwork come together. It can also be stressful in the beginning because you’re performing on some level, working outside, and you have to pull it off. It’s exhilarating but terrifying.”

Of all of his projects, Guinn said he’s most proud of the mural he created in 2010 on Locust Street between 11th and 12th Streets in a community garden called Sartain Garden, near where he grew up.

“The theme of the spirit of community gardening came together really well,” he said. “It was an advancement in my technique and I was able to bring in the feeling- the movement and spontaneity- of the watercolor paintings I was making in the studio, into my mural work. It was an exciting time."

Guinn said he is continually excited by the growing number of muralists in Philadelphia, a city with more public murals than anywhere in the world. He often involves students and former students in the work as assistants on mural projects, from preparing the wall with primer and a grid to drawing and painting, to helping organize community events.

Maxine Whiteley likes to stay one step ahead of the game when it comes to her future as an aspiring textile designer.

A Fine Arts junior with a minor in Textile Design, Whiteley is diligent about professionally documenting her work on the social media sites Behance and Tumblr, as well as on her own personal Website. She updates the sites at least once a week.

“I really just want to approach my junior and senior year in the most professional way possible,” Whiteley said. “I feel like I’m ahead of the game and it’s really important to be. I don’t want to feel overwhelmed by the amount of documentation that needs to be done when I graduate. If you get yourself on the Internet as much as possible, it becomes an ongoing practice.”

Whiteley first began documenting her work through a Digital Portfolio class she completed during her sophomore year. She was required to create a Website, as well as Tumblr and Behance pages, and learn how to professionally photograph her work.

Tumblr is a microblogging platform that allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Moore began using Behance – the leading portfolio portal - this year as part of the College’s career focused mission.

Behance allows artists to post projects and have a centralized portfolio that links directly with social media networking sites and personal websites. Companies can explore the work and access talent on a global scale.

“After my Digital Portfolio class ended, I just kind of kept up with Behance because I liked that it had all of that documentation of my work,” Whiteley said. “It makes you look a lot more professional. I use my Tumblr page more for works in progress and inspirational images. Behance is more for finished work. My own Website has updates on what I’m doing, gallery shows and a sketchbook project I’m doing right now.”

This summer, Whiteley was contacted by the Double Decker curating agency in London and nominated to be part of the Talents Archive Project of the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, Greece. She was sent a sketchbook to fill with work that would expose her creative process. When she finishes the sketchbook, Whiteley will send it back to the OCC, where it will be displayed with the books of emerging student artists from around the world.

“Being a part of Talents Archive is an opportunity for me to gain international attention,” she said. “I'm only 20 years old and this is not something I thought I would be capable of doing at such a young age. For me, it feels like an extremely successful beginning to my career. It's also an opportunity for me to represent Moore at an international level, which is a responsibility I'm honored to have.”

Whiteley has already begun researching where she wants to do her required internship next summer, hopefully in Philadelphia or New York City. In her artist statement, Whiteley said she makes pieces “that resemble textile work through the continuing theme of pattern or the potential of it. I explore these qualities primarily through drawing, painting and sculpture.”

“I recently discovered that I want to work more on interiors than apparel,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of research and it’s important for me to hand draw and hand paint. Companies that hire artists to do preliminary sketches is really important to me.”

Whiteley said she first learned of Moore when she (literally) drove past the College following a high school crew race. Originally from upstate New York, she really liked Moore's location and Googled the College as soon as she got home. She later came back for a tour and loved it. The rest was history.

“I didn’t apply anywhere else because I felt like Moore was the right place,” she said. “I felt like they wanted me here. Other colleges I felt like I was reaching out to them and trying to get them to notice me and I feel like Moore noticed me right away, which was important to me. They sent me handwritten letters, called and e-mailed me, and it was a more personal process.”

Whiteley has been an artist since high school, where she took Advanced Placement art classes and figure drawing classes at an outside art center.

“I always knew I wanted to be an artist and by knowing that I felt like I really had to think ahead of the game about how to promote myself,” she said. “It’s such a competitive industry so I try to always think of the next step, anything I can do to be prepared for the industry ahead of time.”

As a Visionary Woman Scholar, Whiteley has had the opportunity to network with professionals who are at the height of their industries, particularly at the Visionary Woman Awards, where proceeds are raised to support scholarships.

“Every single year at the gala when I’m sitting next to alumni and people in the industry, I can talk to them one on one, whereas I don’t think I’d get that experience elsewhere. They always give advice that’s really helpful and personal.”

When she’s not busy trying to make a name for herself, Whiteley is active on Moore’s Student Leadership Board and Student Life Committee and recently joined the Textile and Fiber Arts Club. She’s also a work-study student in the Development Office at Moore.

At 5 am on Wednesdays, most people are still sleeping. But Lisa Simon is wide awake, sneakers on, ready to run.

Simon, a junior Photography & Digital Arts major and Business minor, is part of Back on My Feet, a national organization that uses running to help those experiencing homelessness change the way they see themselves so they can make real change that results in employment and independent living.

For Back on My Feet Philadelphia, Simon and other Moore students run with residents and volunteers from Gaudenzia’sHouse of Passage in West Philadelphia, an all-female shelter for single women. House of Passage provides support services, including a computer lab, educational and vocational services and community building events.

“I think the basic idea is to motivate people to have energy and a can-do attitude,” Simon said.

Every week around 5 am, Simon and other students meet at Moore and take the College’s shuttle bus to the shelter. There, they connect with Passage residents and volunteers and run for about an hour, or up to 2 miles. Emily Johnson, Assistant Dean of Students at Moore, also runs with the group.

“It’s a very supportive environment,” Simon said. “You can hang with people who aren’t talking about their art projects and deadlines. It’s just about the active running. I like that I don’t have to be focusing on my brain. I can just tune out a little bit and there are many nice people to talk to. It’s a stress relief.”

Simon, who is not an active runner, learned about Back on My Feet through her friends who are involved with Student Services. They asked her to join and she thought it would be something fun to do with her friends and to “kick myself into gear,” she said.

“I’ve done volunteer work in the past, but right now it’s difficult to put aside time for things because of schoolwork,” she said. “But this is something that I’m pretty committed to. I think it has brought me out of my shell a little bit. I don’t think I would run at all if I didn’t have these people who go every week. [Running with these women] is also a reminder that you’re not alone in this struggle, or whatever you’re going through.”

Moore began partnering with Back on My Feet in 2012. Johnson had already been running with the group for two years and wanted to get students involved. Five students are participating this semester, but in the past there have been up to 12 students, she said.

“At first I wasn’t sure if students would be interested in getting up at 5 am and running, sometimes in the cold,” Johnson said. “I was happily surprised that when we put the invitation out, we had so many responses!”

Being from an all women’s college, Johnson said students can relate to and connect with the all-women Passage residents. Seeing the students interact with them and form relationships is powerful and rewarding, she said.

“When you are out there running with the residents of the shelter and other non-resident volunteers, you can’t tell the difference between the two,” she said. “It really shows you that we are all just people, and that at any given time, anyone could experience a hardship and end up in a position where you need some help.”

When she’s not running, Simon said she is focused on her PDA work and getting through a busy fall semester.

“Right now I’m discussing consumer culture and the ritual of consumerism,” she said. “It’s both intriguing but disturbing at the same time. I’m taking photos of still lives that make them look both beautiful and disgusting at the same time. I use elements of familiar rituals drawing from commodified holidays and rites of passage, but reconstructing them in a new, strange way.”

Simon said she applied to Moore because a friend was attending the College. She liked what she saw when she walked through the doors.

“There seemed to be some really good work coming out of the College and there are a lot of really smart people here,” she said. “All of the PDA staff are great, very knowledgeable and supportive in different ways.I definitely love being in Philadelphia because everything is so close. Any day can be a fun adventure and I can really access just about anything I need.”

So when the opportunity presented itself for the junior Fashion Design student to work in the costume department for Terror Behind the Walls, the Penitentiary’s famous Halloween haunted house, the decision was a no-brainer.

“The head of the costume department wanted to expand because they only had two people, so because of my interest in costume design they added an additional person,” Miller said. “Now I’m the assistant costume designer. My future goal is to do costume design for film, so this is a great first step.”

As a student in Moore’s Business Scholars in the Arts program, Miller was recently able to shadow an alumna in her field for a day on the job. Miller connected with Alexa O’Neill ’12, a freelance costume designer, and helped her style a music video. O’Neill had worked at Eastern State Penitentiary and suggested that Miller check it out.

Eastern State Penitentiary was once the most famous and expensive prison in the world, but today stands in ruin on Fairmount Avenue, a haunting world of crumbling cellblocks and empty guard towers. Besides daytime prison tours, the Penitentiary is known for Terror Behind the Walls, a massive nighttime haunted house in the abandoned prison. The extraordinary theatrical production runs on select evenings from September 19 through November 8, 2014.

Terror Behind the Walls hires more than 200 performers, outfitting them in the creepiest costumes to scare visitors who tour the haunted house. As part of that effort, Miller works one day a week in the Costume Shop, fitting costumes, maintaining props, making sure each actor has the right costume, mending any tears, sewing costumes and sometimes creating a whole new costume.

“It’s a team effort,” she said. “We constantly hear of people being really impressed with the costumes, though. They are considered ‘Hollywood quality.’”

Although she has always been a big “Halloween person,” Miller said most people have a misconception that costume designers make the best Halloween costumes. “Most of us don’t have the time to make them for ourselves, so I haven’t had a good one in a long time.”

Miller said she has been fascinated by the history of Eastern State Penitentiary for years, since she first visited in 2012.

“It has that cool, creepy vibe to it,” she said. “I’m also excited to be working there because Terror Behind the Walls is doing something very innovative – giving patrons the option for a more extreme experience.”

When you enter Terror Behind the Walls, you will be confronted with a critical decision: should you explore the prison and watch the action, or should you mark yourself to truly interact with the denizens of the cellblocks? Those who opt in for true interactivity may be grabbed, held back, sent into hidden passageways, removed from their group and occasionally incorporated into the show. For 2014, Terror Behind the Walls has also unveiled the most interactive attraction in the history of the event – the Machine Shop.

Miller likes that her costume work plays a role in the overall experience of Terror Behind the Walls. She credits the BSA program for helping her get the seasonal job of her dreams.

“The Career Center strongly encouraged me to do the shadow day and also helped me perfect my resume,” she said. “At my interview (at the Penitentiary), they complimented me on my resume and hired me on the spot.”

The BSA program is for transfer students with an entrepreneurial bent. Miller transferred to Moore from Carroll County Community College, where she earned an Associate’s degree in Fine Arts.

“Carroll County did not have a fashion program,” she said. “I wanted to come to a small college and I really liked the idea that Moore was an all girl’s college and it seemed very focused. I didn’t want to end up in a big university where I’d feel like just a number. When I received the information in the mail from Moore, my mom said ‘if someone made a school just for you it would be Moore.’”

Daniel Tucker is Moore’s new Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Manager in Social and Studio Practices (which encompasses the MFA degrees in both Studio Art and Community Practice and the MA in Social Engagement.) The two new graduate programs will launch in summer 2015, and will help Moore establish itself as the region’s educational center for community arts practice.

Tucker, of Chicago, IL, works as an artist, writer, teacher and organizer, developing documentaries, publications and events inspired by his interest in social movements and the people and places from which they emerge.

He earned his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his BFA in Exhibition Studies and Video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Vermont College of Fine Arts, the University of Illinois at Chicago and through the Newberry Library in Chicago.

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Daniel about his past experiences, his new book and what he hopes to bring to the Graduate Programs at Moore:

You obviously have a very impressive (and long!) resume and are quite accomplished. What made you want to be a part of the existing Studio Art program and the launching of the two new graduate programs at Moore?

My background is very eclectic, with exhibiting, writing, lecturing and curating - all on a wide variety of subjects. This means I am not someone that fits very well into traditional art and academic programs that are strict in a disciplinary way. So when the opportunity presented itself to head up three programs that combined all of my interests, from making to organizing, I just had to take it on as a new challenge.

How do you envision the new graduate programs evolving? Do you see “social practice” as a growing trend in Philadelphia and the region?

Moore is well positioned to build on all of the impressive socially-engaged art happenings in Philadelphia and to be a hub to convene people from the city and region. Certainly there are young artists trying to create art that is participatory, like Works Progress or Amber Arts - two art/design collectives that will be part of Moore’s Studio Conversations series this spring. But there are also long traditions of people embedding their practices in particular communities like the Asian Arts Initiative or Village of Arts and Humanities, or roving around the city like the Mural Arts Program - three organizations in Philadelphia that I am excited to connect our program with. (Sidenote: The City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program has agreed to partner with Moore to provide innovative, collaborative-style teaching across the two new graduate programs).

How will the three Graduate Programs (the MFA in Studio Art, MA in Art & Social Engagement and MFA in Community Practice) play off of each other?

All three degrees have shared curriculum as well as distinct paths of study, but they all share a common commitment to considering place as a theme and dynamic factor that impacts all three areas. In our complex and interconnected society, the experience of place is not simple, yet it does impact our social and environmental relationships in ways that affect our ability to act and make art: from sourcing materials to connecting with relevant histories. In particular, the low-residency model we are using at Moore allows for graduate school to be an experience that supports our students staying in the places they are committed to working in, whether that be in Philadelphia or in rural New Mexico.

You are new to Moore, but have teaching experience in Chicago. What do you enjoy most about teaching and what do you consider your teaching style?

While teaching is still relatively new for me, I have spent a lot of time speaking to groups of people because of my extensive lecturing and participatory art projects. What I love about teaching is it offers the intimacy that a one-off lecture can never facilitate. The discussions that can emerge in a classroom take you where you never thought you’d go and as much as I like to be well-organized, you can never plan for them entirely. I’ve found that people really respond to materials and documents and experiences- so I try to really ground my teaching in the ephemera and environments that surrounds an artwork or practice.

Where does your interest in social movements stem from and what has been the most inspiring large-scale art project or event that you’ve been involved with?

I recently had the opportunity to reconnect with Bonnie Cecil, my first grade teacher - the person who literally taught me how to read, and we were discussing her pedagogical approach. She talked about how many of the elementary school teachers that taught me were meeting and studying peace education and were excited about experiential learning models that got kids out of the classroom and onto farms, libraries and community organizations. I’ve got to credit these early educational experiences and my social worker parents with providing a context in which art that was concerned with the world around it was the norm and not the exception.

As for a project that has made a big impression on me, I’d have to say that The Department of Space and Land Reclamation sits high on the list. Organized by Nato Thompson when he was a graduate student in collaboration with Emily Forman and Josh MacPhee, it was all about how people engaged with and attempted to use public space as a unifying theme around which several hundred people, ranging from young graffiti artists to housing activists and art students, could find a point of connection. It was part exhibition, part festival and party, part political campaign and it really introduced me to a ton of people and practices that have gone on to inform my work nearly 15 years later.

What are some of the highlights from the long list of exhibitions, residencies, grants and awards, screenings and performances and workshops and lectures you’ve been involved with over the years?

The experiences that stand out to me include three events in 2004: my first opportunity to make a project for a museum when Nato Thompson organized The Interventionists: Art In the Social Sphere at Mass MoCA; organizing a festival for the Chicago Cultural Center with a group of people in Chicago called Versionfest, in which we had a networking fair that encouraged people to intentionally interact by setting up science-fair booths explaining their projects; and collaborating with Romi Crawford at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to organize a lecture series on mapping. I look back to that year as being particularly pivotal, because it gave me a sense of what my skills might be as someone who could organize, but it also introduced me to a whole network of people that have really become my support system over the last decade.

Describe the experience of working with Creative Time and Nato Thompson, where you interviewed 100 socially-engaged artists in five cities?

At the time (around 2008), Creative Time was starting to think about their role as a national and international organization that could produce critical public art projects outside of New York City. I was talking to Nato Thompson about the challenges for national organizations, funders, and institutions to really understand what amazing work was happening in the social and politically engaged art communities in cities across the country. This interested us. We reached out to organizations in five cities to help us out. The experience made a huge impression on me because it helped me understand what range of practices could benefit from being seen in relationship to one another - from youth media, storytelling and murals to critical art that exists in exhibitions and activist art that is made for protests. You can see the interviews here http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2008/democracy/townhall.php

Talk about your new book, Immersive Life Practices, where you interviewed Chicago-based artists about life as an art practice and art as life?

The idea for this book came from a meeting that I had with a farmer while working on a book of interviews with activist farmers in 2009 called “Farm Together Now” with Amy Franceschini and Anne Hamersky. One of the folks we profiled, Joe Hollis, is a medicinal herb farmer in North Carolina and he talked about his hesitation around documenting his work or giving interviews for fear that it would distract him from simply “doing the work.” He ultimately concluded that he knew he had to do both, but that as a result neither the doing nor the showing would be done as thoroughly or completely as he wanted. I found that his predicament was very familiar to me as a problem that artists, especially those that do social and participatory art, really struggle with as well. I pondered it for several years while in graduate school and then when I got the invitation to propose a book idea for this new “Chicago Social Practices History Series” that Mary Jane Jacob was initiating, I decided this would be the time to pursue this line of thinking and talk to a bunch of artists I knew or wanted to know to see what they would say about it.

Unfurlings was a year-long project that I developed with Rebecca Zorach in 2013 when we had a residency at the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago. We knew that there was going to be a lot more attention given to socially-engaged art internationally as well as in Chicago and we felt that in 2011 it was an important time to start building a collection of interviews and material ephemera that could help constructively complicate and intervene in any kind of tidy narrative that might be generated around “social practice” art. So we called ourselves and our project “Never The Same” and set out to build a website where we would interview playwrights, musicians, muralists, ecological artists, veterans of social movement and Black Arts Movement groups. With Unfurlings, we essentially took that work offline and organized our material archive into something that could be publicly accessible with the help of archivists, hosted a symposium on the theme of grassroots archiving, taught adult education courses and organized an exhibition of artists who made work out of our archival materials. It was a busy and exciting year and ended up being the last big project I would organize in Chicago before moving to Philadelphia, so it was a good note to end on.

You lived in Chicago for 14 years, attended school there and obviously have a strong connection to the city. Tell me more about that and also what you hope to see develop in Philadelphia.

Chicago is a great city with a long tradition of artists organizing themselves to do challenging and provocative projects. I came to really appreciate the history of the city and connect with a lot of people who were involved in it. I am really appreciating how much Philadelphia seems to march to the beat of its own drum. But to name a few efforts that are exciting to me: Mural Arts Program, Village of Arts and Humanities, Leeway Foundation, Media Mobilizing Project, Asian Arts Initiative, Slought, Amber, The Think Tank That Has Yet To Be Named, PhillyCAM, Scribe, Practice, RAIR, Prometheus Radio, Philadelphia Folklore Project and Temple Contemporary. As someone new to the city, I look forward to connecting with these groups and others as we develop this program that can strive to build on their work, develop the critical and pragmatic capacity of our students and serve as a gathering place for challenging conversations about the future of the places we live and the role that socially-engaged art can play in the present to transform conditions for the future.

Topf graduated from Moore in 1971 with a degree in Fashion Illustration and a minor in Advertising. She founded Noble Design Associates, an award-winning image development, design and marketing company and became a founding member of the Business Women’s Network in Philadelphia, among other accomplishments.

But in 1981, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and her whole life’s path changed. She could have fallen apart, but instead chose to view her condition as an opportunity for personal growth.

She credits her positive attitude to her education at Moore, particularly a lesson from Professor Louise Stahl’s Color Theory class.

“She had this light box. The assignment was to take pale grey, and put it on a white or black background,” Topf said. “It’s the same grey, but the environment is different. That changed my life. I began to think differently. So I get MS and it’s like, ‘no, I’m not the person who is just going to die from this.’”

Today, Topf is a prominent advocate for disability rights. She is an ordained minister with a Master’s degree in Applied Psychology from the University of Santa Monica, a spiritual and wellness coach, professional speaker and a best-selling published author.

Topf is dedicated to assisting others in seeing that chronic illness, debilitating injury or any kind of adversity can be viewed as a “spiritual awakening.”

“It’s the same metaphor as Louise Stahl’s color box,” Topf said. “The grey is the same on white or black, it’s just different. MS is the same. I know people with MS who are very active and others who are not. It depends on your attitude. Adversity is the greatest teacher that I have. My life has just expanded even more.”

In 1984, Topf founded The MS Initiative, an innovative project for MS patients and their families to ask questions, explore alternative treatments and maintain positive attitudes. The organization expanded to nine states and existed for five years.

In 1995, she published her first book, You Are Not Your Illness: Seven Principles for Meeting the Challenge, through Simon & Schuster. The book shows that illness, injury or disability can not only physically alter your life, but can also cause great emotional upheaval and loss of self-worth. Topf offers an inspirational message and gives readers tips for turning the negative into a positive.

“I was there one day in a wheelchair and I saw that there was no representation of anybody in a wheelchair and I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I contacted the director and said I didn’t see Stevie Wonder or Helen Keller, people who had done amazing things with physical limitations. He said ‘hand me a proposal.’”

Within a month, Topf had helped design and create Inspiration, an exhibit on permanent display at the museum, which profiles noted physically challenged people throughout history.

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but that’s what I’m most proud of,” she said.

In 2011, Topf wrote her second book, Wheelchair Wisdom: Awaken Your Spirit Through Adversity. The book, which will be published this year, aims to shatter widespread notions of what it’s like to spend life in a wheelchair. It been endorsed by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and Arianna Huffington, among others.

In 2012, The Huffington Post invited Topf to write “Wheelchair Wisdom” columns under the Healthy Living banner. She currently writes several columns a month.

“I feel so blessed to have all these opportunities,” Topf said. “There’s no ‘me, me, me’ in this. It’s all about service. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I can’t walk. I don’t know if I ever will again. But the point is it’s not about me anymore.”

Topf said she first discovered Moore in high school by taking Saturday youth art classes. When it came time to apply for college, Moore was the only place she applied.

“I loved the education but I was also a serious student and very committed to my art,” she said. “I honor to this day Ms. Stahl. I went to see her at the home she was at for one of her birthdays. I told her what a difference she had made in my life. She passed away a year later. I’m glad I was able to tell her. You go through life with these significant others and you never get to tell them that.”

Moore alumna Linda Noble Topf ’71, founder of The MS Initiative and author of Wheelchair Wisdom Awaken Your Spirit Through Adversity talks with Loraine Ballard Morrill about the lessons of transformation that can be achieved in the face of serious life challenges.

That’s the message that Nancy Hardy ’69 hopes to impart on Moore students and alumni.

Hardy, a Textile Design graduate, worked for years in the textiles industry. When the work dried up, she went back to school to get her Master’s degree in Interior Design.

She was recently hired at the age of 67 for a new career at Susan Gulick Interiors, a residential interior design firm in Northern Virginia.

And she loves it.

In December 2013, she received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Interior Design from The George Washington University. She graduated from Moore in 1969.

“I was the only student who did their entire graduate project by hand,” she said. “I did a bridal accessory boutique called `Everything But The Dress.’ The students and faculty said I was an inspiration for completing the program.”

Hardy had been a textile designer for most of her life, spending the bulk of her career designing upholstery fabric for a variety of companies.

“When I first started out, I was an employee and then a free agent for 20 years, but I was always under contract,” she said.

At one point, she worked for the largest jacquard upholstery mill, Mastercraft Fabrics. She also worked for Joan Fabrics Corporation and Milliken Inc. designing fabrics.

After Joan Fabrics closed, Hardy worked as design director for Perfect Fit Industries, a company out of Charlotte, NC. In 2009, she was laid off from her job.

“Within five years time, I had a mill close and had been laid off,” she said. “I decided that I was through with textiles because the industry was getting crazy and the U.S. government hadn’t protected our industry from foreign competition.”

Hardy had always loved architecture – in fact prior to coming to Moore she was accepted at an architectural school, but didn’t attend. So she decided now was the time to pursue a degree in interior design.

“I didn’t want to retire and I could practice interior design anywhere in the country, whereas with textile design you have to live in certain areas,” she said.

She enjoyed the Master’s program, although it proved challenging at times.

“In some ways it was easier because I had been a designer and I could make fast decisions, but also with my age it was tough to keep up with all the computer courses. But I made it through with a decent GPA.”

Getting a job straight out of graduate school wasn’t difficult, Hardy said. She scoured Craigslist and found the position at Susan Gulick Interiors, six minutes from her home in Reston, VA.

“They said they’d take someone with no experience,” she said. “I had an incredible background in textiles and she [the boss] wanted a more mature designer so if she was out of the office the business wouldn’t fall apart. That’s where I am now and I’m very happy and we’re very busy.”

Hardy first learned about Moore from her high school guidance counselor. She came to Moore with the goal to pursue fashion design because she already knew how to sew and make her own clothes.

“Fashion Design was overcrowded at that time,” she said. “My freshman year I had classes on the same floor as the textile department and I showed them my portfolio. I got accepted into the program and decided to change my major. It was a wonderful career for me and I had a wonderful instructor who inspired me to become a woven designer. I had a job in April before I graduated.”

The textile skills Hardy acquired at Moore made the transition to the interior design world easier, she said. “I considered it a progression of my career. Textile design is a very tedious job and very detail oriented, and because I was in the upholstery industry I knew a lot of the furniture manufacturers,” she said.

“When you lose a job you have to keep reinventing yourself and adapt,” she said. “I would say dare to do it…because I feel so fulfilled that I got my Master’s degree at 66.”

When Alexa Cottrell signed up for Moore’s Summer Art & Design Institute (SADI), she knew she was interested in fashion design, but wasn’t sure what college she wanted to attend.

“The program was a great way for those who were unsure about where they wanted to go and what major they wanted to take to figure it out,” she said. “In the end, I came to Moore because it felt like home every time I walked through the doors. I knew that if I came to Moore, I wouldn’t just be another number. I could make a mark, but still be part of a close-knit family.”

That’s what made her decide to enroll in the BFA program at Moore. Today, she’s a first-year Fashion Design major.

“Now that I actually attend Moore as a student, it feels like I never left,” she said. “It has been a wonderful experience.”

SADI, a pre-college residential program, is open to young women who have just completed their sophomore, junior or senior year of high school. The Institute allows dedicated students who are passionate about their artwork to immerse themselves in an intense environment developing their skills as artists and designers.

Classes are modeled after Moore’s BFA program and taught by BFA faculty. Students develop finished work for their formal college admission portfolio. Artists’ studio tours, museum and gallery visits expose students to Philadelphia’s large and vibrant arts community.

This year, nine BFA students are graduates of the Summer Art & Design Institute, the largest conversion of SADI students to BFA students to date, said Natalie Payne, co-director of Continuing Education.

Payne attributes the high conversion rate to adjustments made to the SADI program over the years. Student Services now sponsors activities and the residential staff play a greater role, along with the studio assistants, all of whom are current Moore BFA students or recent alumni. An added bonus: more free time for SADI students to explore Philadelphia and day trips to New York City.

“The studio experience is always something the SADI students are extremely positive about on their post-program survey,” Payne said. “Earning three college credits and a scholarship to the BFA program are also important benefits of the program.”

Kiaera Copes attended SADI in 2013 with a focus on Fashion Design and today is a first-year fashion student. “Participating in SADI definitely made me eager to apply to Moore because I got to witness first-hand a sneak preview of what it would be like to attend the BFA program as a student and I loved it,” she said. “Having just finished my junior year in high school prior to SADI, I was very anxious to start the college application process and SADI gave me the opportunity to learn everything there was to know about the school. Perhaps my favorite part of SADI was the fact that I felt like I was in college already! My schedule, assignments, and newfound independence reflected that of a true college experience and that made me want to attend Moore.”

Heather Dixon completed the Fine Arts program in SADI before enrolling in the BFA program at Moore. Now a first year student, she said it proved to be an accurate representation of what to expect in college.

“My favorite part about SADI was coming into the program so inexperienced and leaving with so many more skills under my belt in just a short period of time,” she said. “SADI definitely prepared me for college and my senior year art classes in high school. I was also able to become more independent; being away from my parents allowed me to mature and spread my wings….the city life has me hooked. Being able to walk everywhere and see art around every corner is amazing.”

SADI 2015 will be held June 21 – July 18, 2015. For more information email SADI@moore.edu, call 215.965.4030 or visit here

When Erin (Betlejewski) Wallace '00 graduated from Moore with a Fine Arts degree in 2000, she never imagined she would one day be an entrepreneur – not to mention the successful owner of three Philadelphia taverns and one of a handful of female brewery owners in the city.

Among her numerous responsibilities: overseeing more than 80 employees at all three establishments, working with the chefs on menus, choosing the beers, controlling costs and filling out a lot of paperwork.

“It’s kind of like being a gallery manager, in way,” Wallace said. “I have a chef who is talented in putting together what’s on the plate. The same goes for our brewer. They are artists in their own right, different than I am, but artists. My job is to promote their talents.”

Originally from Baltimore, Wallace first got into the tavern business while waitressing at Cherry Street Tavern while a senior at Moore. Then, they offered her some bartending shifts, which she took while at the same time exhibiting some of her mixed-media artwork and paintings in galleries both locally and in New York.

Also during her senior year, she met her husband, Scott, and got engaged. His father had recently retired and wanted to open a bar. He agreed to invest in a property if Wallace would run it. She left Cherry Street and opened the craft beer focused bar Old Eagle Tavern 11 years ago. Devil’s Den followed six years ago.

“We hit a point where my husband kept driving by the old General Lafayette Inn,” Wallace said. “It had been closed but was back up for sale. It seemed logical. We had two beer bars doing well. Lafayette had a brewery but it had been closed. The idea of finding someone who could brew their own beer on site was appealing. If we were going to grow, it was a good place to go and produce our own beer.”

Barren Hill Tavern & Brewery opened in the old General Lafayette Inn in November of 2013. Wallace said her main focus now is getting Barren Hill up to speed, selling and distributing small batches of beer to other bars and then… taking a much needed vacation.

“All the businesses are doing well,” she said. “Old Eagle is having the best year we’ve had. There’s a really loyal following. Devil’s Den keeps growing.”

Wallace said it’s challenging juggling all three businesses. “Once in a while, people don’t believe that I actually run all these businesses or I get, ‘you’re so young, how do you do it?’”

Wallace, who minored in Art History and Photography at Moore, credits her leadership training as a resident assistant and resident director with instilling in her the skills and confidence to make it as the owner of multiple businesses.

“We learned how to run meetings, did team-building exercises, planned events, did public speaking and learned responsibility,” she said. “I applied all those skills to real life.”

She also said her color theory classes came in handy when designing the restaurants and a small business class she took at Moore taught her how to write a business plan.

Coming from an all-women’s college and with a newfound confidence, Wallace said she wasn’t fazed by being a woman in a mostly male-dominated field.

“More and more owners and managers are women. There are women brewers now, sales reps for brewers and bar owners/managers. Things are starting to turn around, but we’re still outnumbered.”

That’s the name of the illustrated food blog the Moore alum has created reflecting her (mostly) sweet tooth and foodie philosophy.

Lenton, a 2011 graduate with an Illustration major and a minor in Graphic Design, creates original illustrations of food or beverages and her photographer fiancé Robert Cornelius photographs the work for her blog.

Lenton sells prints of her illustrations on her Etsy page with links to the blog item describing the work.

Each illustration takes about five to seven hours to complete on weekends and evenings. Between writing, editing, making the recipe and doing the photo shoot, her more elaborate posts can take between 12 to 15 hours to finish.

“My last two years of college I started getting really interested in food, mainly when I had to start cooking for myself,” she said. “I started reading a lot of food blogs and cookbooks and fell in love with them. As a visual person, I’m not interested in reading a food blog unless it’s pretty and has good photography. I thought that creating my own blog would be a good way to create personal (illustration) work again while talking about another passion of mine – food.”

Lenton is also passionate about giving back to the College that helped nurture her talents. For that reason, from now until September 22, 2014, she is donating 50 percent of the profits from her Etsy shop to the Visionary Woman Scholarships for young female artists at Moore.

The Visionary Woman Awards, an annual event that recognizes women whose lives and careers have made a significant impact on the visual arts, will be held on September 23, 2014. The honorees include curatorial consultant and educator Helen W. Drutt English, painter Janet Fish and fashion designer Nicole Miller.

The awards hold special meaning for Lenton. She received a Visionary Woman Scholarship which allowed her to attend Moore. Ninety-five percent of students receive some form of scholarship money to attend the College.

“I applied to 11 schools and got into all of them,” she said. “Moore was my first choice, but at that point I didn’t know if I could go. Then I found out I had received the scholarship and that sealed the deal. Had I not received it, I probably wouldn’t have been able to go to Moore.”

During her time at Moore, Lenton was a resident assistant and a member of student government. When she graduated, she was named an Alumni Representative on the Board of Managers.

Lenton said she was recently listening to a podcast about giving back. She knew she wanted to contribute to Moore but didn’t necessarily have the financial means to do so. Then she had an idea.

“I’m trying to grow my Etsy shop,” she said. “Several people said they had been thinking of purchasing a print and would do it for the fundraiser. I thought it would be a good way to promote my blog and shop and promote the fundraiser. It’s kind of a win-win.”

When she’s not hard at work at her blog, illustrations or planning her August wedding, Lenton works as a graphic artist at Gingrich Memorials, a monument business in Middletown, PA. There, she does custom hand etchings on gravestones. It’s a 180 degree turn from her previous job designing ads for theLebanon (PA) Daily News.

“It’s really neat and a perfect blend of the skills I have with illustration and graphic design,” she said. “I’m doing artwork on gravestones that people appreciate so much and it will literally be around forever because it’s etched in granite.”

It took time for Lenton to familiarize herself with the tools she had to use for her job, including the “diamond tipped Dremel tool” and a laser machine.

“They were surprised I caught on so quickly but I think a lot of it had to do with the way we learned to draw in the Illustration department at Moore,” she said. “You’re just looking at shapes and values. It’s just drawing with a different medium. It’s not a big deal. You just don’t want to mess up.”

Moore College of Art & Design’s Portfolio Gallery, an online tool that showcases the work of students, alumni and faculty through the leading portfolio portal Behance, allows artists to post projects and have a centralized portfolio that links directly with social media networking sites and personal websites. Companies can explore the work and access talent on a global scale.

Moore, the first and only visual arts college for women in the U.S., began using Behance in March, 2014 as part of the College’s career-focused mission. BFA and graduate students, alumni and faculty have created an online presence and gained exposure through the social network.

There have been plenty of creative networking sites but few have incorporated social, content curation and career building features like Behance. It attracts 15 times the traffic of other portfolio sites and currently has around 1.8 million public projects posted. These projects are linked directly back to the user, who can redirect visitors to their websites helping to maximize exposure and traffic.

Students and alumni who use Behance have reported increased exposure, networking and career opportunities.

Megan Rhodes ’14, a graphic design alumna, has been using Behance for two years. After viewing her portfolio on the site, a small start-up company offered her freelance work. Rhodes said she likes the fact that Behance syncs with Adobe Pro Site, allowing her to build a standalone website without ever writing code. “It’s a very helpful resource for people who haven’t gotten a website up yet, and it’s a good place to start an online presence, which is really important.”

Skye Bolluyt ’15, an Illustration major, created a Behance portfolio this spring as part of her internship preparation course. “I like the site because I had an internship in Philadelphia and afterwards I could follow them on Behance and they could follow me back and we could keep in touch. Behance has job listings as well. You can search in your major or career path and I’m hoping to contact illustrators that I really admire.”

Dominick Saponaro, an adjunct professor in the Illustration department, said he has been using Behance a lot more in recent months. He especially likes that the site is fully integrated with Creative Cloud so posting projects directly from applications streamlines the process of sharing art and receiving feedback. “I have a pretty big presence on Facebook and Twitter for my professional work,” he said. “Every few months I try to find another service that extends that reach a bit more and Behance does that. It’s nice to have my work pop up in front of potential clients. They appreciate and like my work so I know the work is getting in front of their eyeballs, which is why I’m doing it.”

Moore College of Art & Design educates students for careers in art and design. Founded in 1848, Moore is the nation's first and only women's art college. Moore's student-focused environment and professionally active faculty form a dynamic community in the heart of Philadelphia's cultural district. The College offers ten bachelor of fine arts degrees for women. Coeducational graduate programs were launched in summer, 2009. In addition, Moore provides many valuable opportunities in the arts through The Galleries at Moore, continuing education programs for professional adults, the 91-year-old acclaimed Young Artists Workshop for girls and boys grades 1-12, The Art Shop and the Sculpture Park. For more information about Moore, visit www.moore.edu.

January Waters ‘13 is a big supporter of the required internship experience at Moore.

The graphic designer’s internship with Anthropologie in Philadelphia led to a full-time job with BHLDN, the company’s wedding brand, soon after graduation. Moore, as part of its career-focused mission, is the only art and design school to provide $1,000 paid internships for each student in every major.

“It’s a great first job after graduating,” Waters said. “My internship really helped to get my foot in the door, got me familiar with the brand and how to apply my artistic abilities to graphic design. It provided real world experience.”

Today, as Print & Interactive Designer for BHLDN/Anthropologie Weddings, Waters is responsible for the company's print materials – from store signage and tags for wedding gowns to packaging design and invitations. For the “interactive” part of her job, she designs company e-mails and blog entries for “B-Inspired,” a part of BHLDN’s site which offers helpful tips for brides.

“I get to use my illustration skills,” Waters said. “Because I’m also a fine artist, it’s really nice to get hands-on with things, and that’s something that BHLDN really appreciates as part of their brand, a hand-made quality.”

Some of her most rewarding experiences with BHLDN, which just celebrated its third birthday, were designing products for the décor department. She created graphics for a Mr & Mrs wine tote, “Will you be my…” bridesmaid and maid of honor totes, as well as drawings and paintings for a set of four dessert plates currently in production – and soon to be in stores.

Waters hopes to continue to grow with the company, develop her skills and eventually work on more product design.

“It was a cool opportunity because it was really unexpected as a graphic designer to get to design a product that intensely,” she said. “I did the entire product from start to finish. It was a great learning experience.”

Waters transferred to Moore from another college after realizing she wanted to attend a smaller art school. A high school art teacher recommended she look into Moore.

“I felt really comfortable when I walked in the door,” she said. “I liked the small classes and the staff was so friendly and helped you out. The professors seemed to be very connected and pushed you to go outside the school environment and into the city to see exhibits. It opened a lot of doors and made you think about the broader picture.”

Waters also credits the graphic design department at Moore with giving her the requisite skills to be successful in her career.

“I really got the feel for the Adobe programs, Photoshop and In Design and that’s all I use at work,” she said. “If I didn’t have that knowledge I wouldn’t know what I was doing. And of course there’s the internship. Having the opportunity to go out in the field and learn what it’s like to be a professional is definitely rewarding. I think every school should require it.”

An Art Education major, Faunce ’06 had planned to become a teacher. But an encounter with her then-three-year-old son sparked her entrepreneurial spirit.

“One afternoon my son was running around with one of my dishtowels,” she said. “I realized he was being a superhero. I realized I needed to make him a cape and get my dish towel back.”

With her already-established sewing and design skills, Faunce took a stab at making some capes by hand out of her Philadelphia home. At the advice of Moore’s Locks Career Center, she opened an Etsy shop to see if the capes would sell. Everything she listed sold within a week. Despite being offered two teaching positions, Faunce felt the pull to start her own business.

“Over the next couple of weeks I got a wholesale account to sell at a store and started getting media inquiries,” Faunce said. “I was working about four different part-time jobs at the time while finishing my degree and taking care of my son. It was really difficult to keep leaving him. The idea was I could probably do something from home. As Etsy became more time consuming with orders I quickly started cutting off the part-time work.”

A few months before graduating from Moore, Little Hero Capes was born. The company’s mission is “to empower imagination and create real world heroes” through Superhero capes for kids. The merchandise also includes Little Hero t-shirts, traditional hero masks and “power cuffs” for the wrist.

In October, 2008, Faunce launched her official website and incorporated working with a charity. At Little Hero Capes, 10 percent of each order goes to the Discovery Arts Program, which brings music, art, dance and drama to children with cancer, serious blood disorders and life threatening illness while they are in the hospital receiving treatment.

“Art education is close to my heart,” Faunce said. “Bringing art to children in a hospital seemed like a good way to support them. The capes I design make children feel strong and brave. Every child needs a cape.”

In 2010, Faunce and her family moved to Massachusetts for her husband’s job. At the time, Faunce was still making the capes alone out of her living room. More stores were beginning to pick up her line and business was growing at a rapid pace.

“I was pregnant with my second son at that point and was pulling all nighters nine months pregnant, pushing away friends and family,” she said. “At that point I realized I couldn’t duplicate myself, I had to find a way to bring on help.”

She found that help in Fall River, Mass, a town with numerous abandoned mill buildings. There, she discovered Fall River Apparel, a cutting and sewing facility.

“I told the owner I had been making these capes out of my living room and could he help me mass produce them,” Faunce said. “There was a big learning curve, but because of slow business and the owner’s optimism in me, he latched on to teaching me about how homemade to mill-made was going to work. Being a visual learner, it was great to see people actually making the capes. Coming from an artist’s background, you don’t want to give up any part of your creation to someone else’s hand, but I realized if I wanted to grow the business and get capes to kids that needed it, I’d have to let go of the process.”

Today, working with a team, Faunce sees the potential to grow the business more intentionally. She no longer has to turn away orders or spend less time with her family.

“I’ve taken on more of the manager role of the business, working on marketing and gaining more wholesale accounts and they are taking over the creation of the capes,” she said. “What Moore taught me was to have the confidence and the vision to create whatever I thought of.”

Last year, Little Hero Capes made $100,000 in sales. Faunce just re-launched the company website, highlighting specific children and their stories. Visitors can nominate any child who they think needs a cape or donate to a specific child. Faunce plans to expand the charity side of the organization, encouraging “grown-ups” to be “real life heroes” for a child.

Faunce said her most rewarding experience at Moore was her involvement in the Student Leadership Program, both as a Resident Assistant and Resident Director. Being part of that program gave her the skill set she needed to venture out on her own as an entrepreneur.

“I used to feel intimidated when I networked with male business owners, but I could brush those nerves aside by falling back on seeing so many strong women in leadership positions at Moore and just take myself seriously,” she said. “I’m not the cookie-cutter small business owner. I have confidence that I’m paving the way here.”

Melinda Houvig is a conceptual artist and professional fine art figure model living and working in the Greater Philadelphia area.

She just completed her first year of the MFA in Studio Art program at Moore. Her current work investigates narratives, intimate conversations and connections. She earned a BFA in Studio Art from West Chester University in 2012.

“I graduated undergrad as a painter, but when I started this program [at Moore] I wanted to do work that was more mixed media, 3-D work and experimental sculptures,” Houvig said. “This past semester I found my way back to painting through the graphic design work that I’m doing right now.”

Houvig currently appropriates lines of text from old novels and writes her own poetry. She juxtaposes the poetry with popular iconic imagery into a handmade collage on a postcard.

She has distributed the postcards through Postcrossing.com, a project that allows anyone to receive homemade postcards from anywhere in the world.

“You register and you’re sent an ID number of someone,” she said. “You read their bio and then you can mail them a card.”

Houvig will be exhibiting her collage work in two solo shows this fall, one in Lancaster and one in Philadelphia.

In addition to making art in the graduate program, Houvig is a full-time figure model at Montgomery County Community College as well as at other non-profit art centers in the Philadelphia area.

As a member of Moore’s Graduate Student Association (GSA), Houvig is helping to secure the first GSA Artists Exhibition with Montgomery County Community College, one of Moore’s transfer partner schools. The show will be on view this fall at the College’s Fine Art Barn in Blue Bell, PA.

“It will be an exhibition of artwork from graduate students across all of Moore’s programs,” Houvig said. “There will also be several collaborative works on view, bringing together a Montgomery College student artist with a Moore graduate artist. I want the show to be about where the students can take their art outside of a two-year community college program. I want them to see that even after undergraduate work there is numerous potential for where their art can take them.”

Houvig first discovered Moore back in high school, when she took several youth classes at the College. She decided to return for graduate school to be part of a smaller, more intimate community. Houvig will depart today [Friday] for Ireland to hike for two weeks prior to the start of her required four-week international graduate residency in Burren, Ireland this summer.

“I can’t wait to be immersed in another culture for six weeks,” she said. “I’m excited to be a part of this program, to study internationally and to meet artists from all over the country.”

Houvig said she appreciates the personal relationships she’s developed with the graduate faculty at Moore.

“It’s almost like the teacher-student relationship transforms and you realize you’re a peer working with other peers,” she said. “It helps you to realize your potential.”

Once she earns her graduate degree, Houvig plans to teach art at Montgomery County Community College.

“Working as a model, I see students come into the classroom who have limited ideas about art,” she said. “At the end of the semester, having posed for them and helped them learn about light and shadows, they get excited about their work. I want to be a part of that process as a teacher.”

The Pittsburgh, PA-based company creates innovative software to help online shoe shoppers figure out what size to order. The company uses a database of internal shoe measurements, acquired using 3D imaging technology, to compare the size and shape of a shoe a shopper is currently wearing to one she wants to buy.

Moore alumna Hannah Garrison ’13, Illustration, is a Footwear Taxonomy Specialist for the growing startup, which currently provides the online shoe fitting app to several brands in the athletic footwear industry – from K-Swiss to New Balance – and is now moving into the dress/casual and women’s footwear markets.

“We’re very new and within the last eight or nine months we’ve been expanding very quickly and partnering with exciting clients,” Garrison said. “It’s an exciting time to be here because there are always new things happening or things that pop up that we have to figure out. Everyone is extremely talented, from our sales reps to our developers, so it’s great to be around those kinds of people.”

As a Footwear Taxonomy Specialist, Garrison basically spends her day looking at shoes. She selects shoes from the company’s online database and categorizes them, from the brand to the model, to the color and material, plus any special features on the shoe.

“I individually process hundreds of shoes a day,” Garrison said. “The most visual thing I’m doing is using my eye to make the decision of how to categorize something, especially when it gets very specific. There can be a minute difference between shoes. Researching is a skill I learned at Moore, and that has been helpful.”

Garrison was recently offered the opportunity to work on some design projects at the company.

“I’ve been increasingly interested in merging my design skills with my interest in technology and how users interact with the end product (the app, computer program, etc), so I’m very excited,” she said.

Although she works full-time at Shoefitr, Garrison is also a freelance illustrator and a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators. She recently sold some of her work at the International Drawing Symposium at Carnegie Mellon University. She’s also working on a children’s book for a client who is interested in nature and science. Lastly, she works part-time in the gift shop at Phipps Conservancy, a botanical garden in Pittsburgh.

Garrison grew up in Milford, PA and wanted to attend art school in a large city. Philadelphia and Moore were the perfect fit.

“When I initially came to Moore for an Open House, I really got a sense of the community and the individualized attention I would get from the professors that I might not have gotten at a larger school. I really appreciate the experience I had at Moore,” she said.

Visit the Shoefitrwebsite to learn more about the benefits of online shoe fitting technology.

She took a Portfolio Preparation class through the Pre-College Program for High School Young Adults at Moore.

And then she took it again a second time.

"I wanted to create more pieces for my portfolio and I came out of the class both times with several pieces," Le said. "I work pretty slow, but with the pieces that I had also brought in from outside of school, my instructors gave me feedback and helped me improve. I saw what colleges wanted and didn't want. The class covered all spectrums of mediums, which was pretty cool."

Le, 17, also completed two Expressive Portraiture classes through the Youth Programs and discovered a newfound love for portraits.

"I got a lot of basic skills and I was surrounded by these really talented students and that really helped and reflected in my work as well," Le said. "We played off of each other's skills. I feel like I became a better artist.

"Before Moore I never had the chance to have a model sit in front of me so I could draw for hours, but it was really nice," she said. "In my own time I'm really busy and never have a chance to draw for three hours straight. At Moore, it was a really nice opportunity to sit in silence and get my work done."

Le, of Willingboro, NJ, is a student at Moorestown Friends School and learned about the Youth Programs from her art teacher. Her teacher, in partnership with Moore, was able to offer her a scholarship to attend the programs.

Le said she plans to take more classes at Moore this summer. She currently has an oil painting on display in the Youth Programs catalog.

"I'm thinking of applying to art school, but I might go into communications or media design," she said. "But primarily I'm a fine artist and I work with painting."

Cara Scudner has been ice skating since she was 14.She competed in the sport until she started classes at Moore, where she earned her BFA in Fashion Design with a graphic design minor in 2012.“I started skating again two days after graduation and after I had been home for a few months I decided to start competing again,” she said. “And that really took off.”Scudner competed in the 2014 U.S. Adult Figure Skating Championships in April, earning medals in three categories. But this time she was there as both a competitor and a vendor.In addition to her own figure skating career, Scudner creates custom dresses and outfits for all ages and levels of skaters. She sells them at skating competitions as part of her business, Cara Anne Designs, based in Lancaster.“I come up with sketches, listen to their [the girls’] music, talk to their coaches and create just for them,” she said. Scudner also makes skating accessories, such as key chains and embroidered skate towels (for skaters to dry off their blades after skating). She is working on a line of practice pants and off-the-rack dresses. She has even started making skating apparel for dolls.“When you look at skating outfits for dolls out there, they don’t look like the dresses the girls are wearing,” Scudner said. “I’ve started making dresses that actually look like skating outfits. They are small and fiddly but I enjoy the challenge.”Scudner credits her education at Moore with giving her the confidence and courage to start her own business. “I think one of the most beneficial things about my time at Moore was being involved in student leadership, both as a resident assistant/director and as part of the Emerging Leaders in the Arts program,” she said. “As a business owner there’s always a new challenge or problem I have to solve.”Scudner also appreciates Moore’s small size and the “sense of community.”“It’s great to have a network of other creative individuals that I can call on for feedback about something,” she said.Scudner is looking forward to attending Moore’s Spring Fashion Show this Saturday as a fashion design alumna. As a senior, she won the Charming Shoppes Most Saleable Collection Award as well as the Jannaman Award for Excellence in Construction.“I’m very excited to see what this year’s class has been working on,” she said. “I love that the fashion show is held right in Aviator Park. It just adds to the sense of community that is Moore – that was my front yard for four years, the place where I studied, sketched and hung out with friends. To have the fashion show there just felt right.”

For more information on Cara Anne Designs, visit Cara’s websiteRead an article about Cara in her local newspaper

Cocoagraphs are artisan chocolate bars printed with edible Polaroid-style photographs. The chocolates are completely custom, printed with any photograph, graphic, logo – even Instagram image – of your choosing. It’s easy to create gifts or souvenirs for any occasion, from weddings to holidays to corporate events. You just need to follow an order form to upload your high-quality images into edible art.

“I love what I’m doing,” Vittorelli said. “I’m having so much fun. All the skills that I learned at Moore I’m using in this business.”

After studying photography and printmaking at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Vittorelli transferred to Moore to complete her degree in 3D Fine Arts, with an emphasis in sculpture and metalsmithing.

“That first year after graduation I injured myself and had a hard time doing sculptural work,” she said. “I started an office job and began making sculptural cakes on the side. I learned a lot about sugar. It was a new material to work with. It’s a lot like working with clay and other tools in school. I eventually found chocolate, and then I found a way to combine art and food to make edible art. It was a lot of trial and error. My friends ate a lot of weird flat cakes and a lot of untempered chocolate.”

In 2010, Vittorelli came up with the concept for her business. She invested some of her own money and secured loans from family to get started. She rented kitchen space from a local bakery and partnered with a Philadelphia marketing firm to get the word out. After some initial press hits in 2011, she went from having 100 hits on her website to 30,000 in one day.

“The concept went viral, especially the Instagram part of it,” she said. “That’s what put us on the map.”

Since that time, Cocoagraph has been featured inInStylemagazine, The Huffington Post, on VH1’s Morning Buzz, and ABC’s “The View” for a segment on “Valentine’s Day gifts with a twist.” She even provided chocolate bars for a recent Oprah Winfrey movie.

“We’ve had great feedback about how our product is a really unique, cool gift idea,” she said. “There are companies that print on chocolate but it’s not as artistic as ours. We also use really high quality chocolate and artisanal ingredients. The original size of the bar is the exact size of a 1980s style Polaroid. It looks like you’re holding a Polaroid in your hand, but it’s chocolate.”

The company grossed over $50,000 in its first year and the orders keep coming in, Vittorelli said. She’s looking to expand her business and open her first retail space in the near future.

She credits Moore with providing her with a diverse art education that really helped her launch her business.

“At Moore, you really got to explore different mediums,” she said. “The fact that I have so many different skills – from painting to sculpture to metalsmithing to ceramics – is because of Moore. I work with molds, all the things I did with sculpture. And I use Photoshop and Illustrator every day.”

Her advice to Moore students? “Explore all the things you’re interested in. As an artist, all those skills will come in handy one day, no matter what your major is.”

The junior Fashion Design major has a 3.9 grade point average, is the recipient of two recent scholarships/fellowships and has been offered her pick of summer internships.

Next year, she’ll be the first in her family to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree.

“It’s going to feel great,” she said. “My family is really proud of me. I can’t wait to graduate and start my career.”

Born in Kenya, one of seven siblings, Oluoch was the first to migrate to the United States to pursue her dream of being a fashion designer. In 2000 she arrived in Baltimore, where she attended Baltimore Community College for Computer Aided Design (CAD). She then moved to Virginia to work for a loan company for several years. The company relocated to Delaware, where Oluoch started a family, eventually moving to Philadelphia to pursue her dream of fashion.

After a short stint at the Art Institute in Philadelphia, Oluoch, a non-traditional aged student, transferred to Moore. The rest, she said, was history.

“Moore is family,” she said. “Because I don’t have family here, I’ve met people who I’ll keep in my life forever. It’s amazing how much people really, sincerely care here. Because of how I push myself, I’ve really seen myself grow from when I started.”

At Honors Convocation last week, Oluoch received the Sis Grenald Travel Fellowship and The Fashion Group International/Libby Haynes Hyman Endowed Scholarship. For her travel fellowship, she plans to visit London to gain experience fusing fashion and sculpture alongside artist Yinka Shinobare.

Oluoch will also travel to South Africa for her summer internship with design labels David Tlale and Leopard Frock.

Before that, she’ll be showing her swimwear and menswear looks at Moore’s Spring Fashion Show on May 17, 2014.

Oluoch admits it can be difficult to balance being a full-time student at Moore, working part-time (as a gallery guide and visitor service assistant at the Barnes Foundation), and being a mom to her 5-year-old son, Alexander. But it’s all worth it, she said.

“Sometimes I get overwhelmed, but then I look at my son and realize I’m going to be able to provide him with everything he needs one day,” she said. “I just want him to grow up into a great man someday.”

Shannon Jones received a scholarship to attend last month’s TEDxPhiladelphia, a daylong multidisciplinary conference championing great ideas and bringing together engaging speakers to examine the 2014 conference theme “The New Workshop of the World.”

One of the reasons she wanted to attend the conference was to hear a TED Talk by Katherina “Kat” Rosqueta, founding executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy. High impact philanthropy is the practice of philanthropy with the intention of maximizing social good.

Jones, a sophomore Fine Arts major, is already practicing a version of high impact philanthropy on her own through Kiva.org, a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. “The basic mechanics of it is you find someone who is asking for a loan to help their business or to start a business, usually in developing countries,” Jones said. “You give them a small amount of money, then other people give them money, and they eventually have enough money for their loan. They implement their business plan and then pay the money back. When you get your money back, you can loan it out again to someone else.”

Jones typically lends about $25 at a time. She has made seven loans since last year - or given about $175 - primarily to struggling artists whose stories she connected with. She lent to a woman in Pakistan who needed money for fabric, tissue paper, glue and wire to make and sell flowers. She also gave money to a man in Mexico who builds sculptures out of metal scraps and needed to purchase raw materials.

“You go to the ‘lend’ tab and it pulls up stories of people who need money for their loans,” Jones said. “You can search for something in the arts or by gender, or for an individual or a group that needs a loan. They are all vetted through Kiva, with a loan repayment rate of over 98 percent. I’ve always gotten paid back.”

“I was excited about the site because I don’t have $100 to donate to charity, and this way I have donated a small amount of money, but it keeps coming back to me so I can donate again,” Jones said. “It makes you feel good. It’s nice to think about helping others.”

Jones, who hails from Arizona, said she learned about Moore through a recruiter who came to her high school. “I like Moore because of the small community,” she said. “I went to a large high school where there were some people I had never seen before graduating next to me. I like that we are a small school. I also like that we’re in Center City. We may be an all-women’s campus, but we certainly don’t exist in a vacuum. There’s a lot going on around us.”

Originally from Tehran, Iran, Bonabi came to the United States in 2011 to earn her graduate degree in Interior Design at the College.

Currently in her final year of the MFA in Interior Design program, Bonabi said it has been a great opportunity. “I like the program a lot,” she said. “I like that all of the faculty are working in the field and they helped introduce me to my internship.”

Bonabi is currently interning at Francis Cauffman, an award-winning architecture firm, and is also freelancing for Abby Schwartz, one of her interior design instructors.

Bonabi heard about Moore by doing research on graduate interior design programs. She got accepted into five colleges in the U.S., but chose to come to Moore after receiving a scholarship and having a great interview.

“Everybody was really nice and that’s why I decided to come here,” she said. “I felt like it was the best choice for me.”

Bonabi originally studied electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, earning her BS degree in 2009. But after entering the workforce, she felt that it wasn’t the right fit.

“I did some research, talked with some architect friends, and learned about the interior design field,” she said. “My friends suggested I take some courses to see if I liked it, and I did. But since there were no academic programs for interior design in Iran, I decided to apply in the U.S. So far it has been a really good fit.”

Moving from Iran to the U.S. was a major transition. It took some time for Bonabi to acclimate to her new life. She learned English at a young age so that was helpful.

“It was a big change. It was difficult because I didn’t know anyone,” she said. “I came with two bags and that’s it. I was living in the (Moore) dorms the first three months that I was here, so that helped me get comfortable. I got to know the city and school and country, and then I got my own apartment.”

With just four students in her interior design class, Bonabi said she has made some good friends at Moore.

“The fact that we’re a small group is great because the teachers can pay more attention to our individual projects and take time for each of us.”

Bonabi also enjoys exploring Philadelphia and learning more about the historic city.

“In my first year, we had a History of Interior Design class and had to look at different places in the city,” she said. “I began to know Philadelphia from an architectural perspective and I really liked it. It’s really diverse.”

After graduating from Moore, Bonabi hopes to earn her PH.D in architectural technology and eventually move back to Iran to start her own design firm.

“I hope to be successful and introduce my knowledge to my country,” she said.

Potter, a senior Fine Arts major, has collaborated with Sreshta Rit Premnath, Assistant Professor of Foundation, Fine Arts, and Photography & Digital Arts, to curate a 15-week series of feature-length documentaries shown every Tuesday through the end of April in Stewart Auditorium.

The film series is in conjunction with Potter’s film club, Rogue Screenings, and Premnath’s “Documenting the Social Landscape” class. Films shown include Leviathan (2012), an experimental, almost wordless documentary on the North American fishing industry and Werner Herzog’s Happy People (2010).

“We wanted to show interesting documentaries, but beyond the content, all the films we’re showing also say something about the process of documenting,” she said. “It has been a great collaborative experience.”

Potter considers herself a sculptor, but “with a heavy emphasis in photography and video so that all of my objects tend to be performative.”

“I was so heavy on craft when I first came here, but it’s slowly becoming more about the image than the actual object,” she said.

For her thesis, “Why do I Selfie?” Potter is examining the “selfie,” “selfhood,” “Instagramming” and what she calls “cell phone cinema.”

Right now, much of her art work exists online, most recently on the OKCupid dating site. “I posted my artist statement as a dating profile,” she said.

Potter is perhaps best known for her CarboCats, taxidermy forms covered in 20 pounds worth of elbow macaroni. They were featured in Philadelphia Magazine’s food blog and were also responsible for her upcoming participation in the Select Fair NYC this May.

“Everybody loves the CarboCats, they have a life of their own,” she said. “They are mostly about apathy... that I would spend so much time on what is essentially a 2nd grade craft product.”

Potter was granted an artist residency this summer with the University of Gastronomy in Bra, Italy, where she will put together a film program. Over spring break, she worked with video artist Micheal Raftery from Richmond, Va., shooting a short reality show series.

Potter completed her Foundation years at the Maryland Institute College of Art and transferred to Moore as a sophomore/junior.

Potter said she chose Moore because she was interested in careers for women and was impressed by the College’s emphasis on career placement. She also appreciated the fact that faculty were so involved in the Philadelphia gallery scene.

“Moore is an incredibly small, close-knit place,” she said. “It’s incredibly unique. I will forever be grateful for my fellow Moore women. The artists I’ve become close to here are the strongest, most interesting women I’ve ever met.”

She was a struggling artist who became a published author through talent, hard work, and the inability to take “no” for an answer.

Ignatow, an Illustration alumna who lives in Mt. Airy, PA., is best known as the author and illustrator of the New York Times-reviewed children’s book series, The Popularity Papers.

Her first book in the seven-book series, The Popularity Papers: Research for the Social Improvement and General Betterment of Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang, was published by Amulet Books in 2010. A second and third book followed in 2011, a fourth in 2012 and a fifth and sixth book last year. The seventh and final book in the series is due out in September.

“I love doing this work so much,” she said. “I live in fear of not being able to do it. And I get tremendous publisher support. I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life. So I keep working very fast. If you wait too long between books and it’s a series, the kids might lose interest.”

The Popularity Papers are about two best friends, Lydia and Julie. The books begin when the characters are in the fifth grade and they have a year to go before starting middle school. They want to be popular and they observe the girls who are already popular and try to emulate them. Both characters keep a journal to document the process and “wackiness ensues,” Ignatow said.

“The story progresses from them being overly obsessed with popularity through middle school, where they gain survival skills,” she said. “The seventh book with be the end of seventh grade. It’s fun. I’ve gotten a lot of letters from kids who relate to the characters. It’s really about lifelong friendships.”

Ignatow joked that her next book title is just going to be “initials,” since each book in The Popularity Papers series has an extra long title. “We thought it was hilarious at the time but didn’t realize how much I’d be typing,” she said. “The main characters have an inflated sense of self.”

After graduating from Moore in 2002, Ignatow had numerous part-time teaching jobs and spent two years as a stationery designer. She taught cartooning and portfolio prep at Moore’s Young Artist Workshop and the Summer Art & Design Institute. She started an online cartoon called “Ig City,” a “humorous observational look at the day-to-day life of a 20-something recent graduate in Center City.” The cartoon got the attention of a literary agent, who asked Ignatow if she ever thought about writing for kids.

“I had been doing all this biographical stuff up to that point, but when the agent suggested writing for kids the ideas began to flow and I realized that’s where I’m most comfortable,” Ignatow said. She landed her first book deal in 2008.

Originally from Long Island, NY, Ignatow transferred to Moore from SUNY Oneonta. “Going to an all-women’s college was attractive to me because I wanted to feel comfortable doing my work without any drama or distractions,” she said. “The camaraderie I felt with my classmates still supports me, and it’s no wonder that The Popularity Papers is an ode to lasting female friendship.”

While at Moore, Ignatow helped produce the student-run publication now known as More magazine.

“My experience at Moore was incredibly positive,” she said. “I felt like I was supported by the faculty, who I’ve kept in touch with. When I got my first contract I went to them for advice.”

So what’s next for Ignatow? She’s contracted to complete The Popularity Papers and write two additional books in a brand new series.

“To be a working artist where I’m bringing in a real income on a regular basis doing exactly what I love and went to school for is incredibly satisfying,” she said.

Kirk Widra’s goal is to see the world, while helping people at the same time.

Widra, who teaches graphic design in the Youth and Continuing Education programs at Moore, will travel to Morocco next month to teach underprivileged children computer technology with the help of International Volunteer HQ (IVHQ), an organization which provides volunteer travelers with quality and highly affordable volunteer placements in developing countries.

Widra has traveled to the island of Malta, Haiti, The Dominican Republic and all over Northern Europe, giving lectures on topics related to education technology. It was while in Haiti that he realized he wanted to devote more time to volunteer work. .

“My biggest decision there was whether to eat sushi or a gourmet meal at my five-star resort while their [the people who lived there] biggest decision was whether they were going to eat at all or how they were going to eat,” he said.

This inspired Widra to get his master’s degree in educational leadership from Argosy University in Pittsburgh.

Although the Moroccan government is working hard to improve literacy and promote professional development, a large percentage of Moroccan children and teenagers are not given the chance to acquire marketable skills, Widra said. As a volunteer, he will work with these children, providing training in English and information technology. He will be there for two months and will live with a host family.

“Growing up I never realized how lucky I had it. Travel has allowed me to see just how important education is because the world is getting smaller and people need to know how to contribute to the conversation and that’s through technology and education,” he said. “It’s my way of contributing. And I always like to check out different cultures.”

When he’s not teaching or traveling, Widra runs his own freelance graphic design and marketing consulting firm in Philadelphia. With over 15 years experience, he specializes in brand development and multi-platform marketing strategies.

Moore College of Art & Design congratulates alumna Victoria Wright ’12, who has been named a Designer-in-Residence for the third year of the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator (PFI) program at Macy’s Center City. The fashion initiative was created to help foster and support emerging local fashion design talent.

Wright said she always wanted to apply for the Incubator because she hoped to launch her own fashion line. She was just waiting for the right time.

“I thought it would be a wise decision to either work in NYC or Philadelphia for another more established fashion house first. So, I did a lot of freelance work (Club Monaco and Rebecca Taylor) and internships after graduation, but a full-time job wasn’t really coming my way,” she said.

Janice Lewis, professor, chair of Fashion Design at Moore, approached Wright about the Incubator program after the deadline for applications was extended. “It was an incredible opportunity,” Wright said. “They give you amazing tools. Everything I was afraid of, that I didn’t really know how to do is going to be taught to me, grooming me to be this business-minded designer."

The new class of designers now has access to the Philadelphia Fashion Incubator’s 800 + square-foot production room, office and showroom housed in Macy’s Center City. For the next year, they will receive business mentoring from some of the region’s leading business professionals, as well as workshops and retail critiques with the fashion industry’s most celebrated talent.

The program is a collaboration between The City of Philadelphia, Center City District, Macy’s Center City and several educational institutions devoted to fashion design in Philadelphia, including Moore, Drexel University and Philadelphia University.

Wright graduated from Moore in 2012 with a major in fashion design. She is sole designer and owner of Victoria Wright, a ready-to-wear women’s line. Her aesthetic is very whimsical, feminine and chic with a contemporary edge.

“I take a lot of inspiration from vintage style and icons like Brigitte Bardot and Audrey Hepburn, but I like to update those styles,” Wright said. “I love vintage clothing. Some things you see in the store are beautiful, but you can’t wear them because they’re kind of dated. I like to update and make them more wearable for today’s busy woman.”

So far, the Incubator program, which started this week, has been an amazing experience, Wright said. She has attended a “business boot camp,” visited the Nicole Miller store, and taken a field trip to the Wharton Business School, where she learned how to create a business plan.

“It has been exhausting but so marvelous,” she said. “The other designers are fabulous. We all really get along well. We have different aesthetics but I think we’ll be a really great team. My main goal is to really be successful.”

Wright knew from an early age that she was going to be a fashion designer. She attended the Summer Art & Design Institute (SADI) at Moore as a teenager, which led her to enroll in the BFA program at the College.

“It was such a great experience,” she said. “High school students thinking of fashion design should really do the program. It really helped me figure out and know that fashion was what I definitely wanted to do, without question. Many people go to college and change their major a thousand times. I wasn’t that person. I figured it out.”

“When I had too much to do, I was constantly making ‘To-Do’ lists and it was really frustrating because I could never cross everything off of my list,” said O’Brien, adjunct professor of graphic design at Moore.

Thus, the Coffee Cup Project was born.

To subvert the tedious “To Do” list, every time O’Brien bought a cup of coffee (usually from Starbucks) she would use the blank part of each cup to keep a record of all she had accomplished once caffeinated. Each cup had a label with the date and time of purchase. In the span of two months and about 50 cups, narratives emerged of what she spent the most time doing, including work projects, as well as interactions with people.

“The objective was to document what I was doing and also to remind myself that I was doing a lot,” O’Brien said. “When you can’t cross things off your ‘To-Do’ list, you get down on yourself that you’re not productive enough. By switching it upside down, this project was a lot more encouraging and made me realize I do a lot of stuff.”

An installation of the coffee cups from the project, To Do: get coffee, was part of a solo exhibition, Datum Chronicle, at PRESS: LetterPRESS as a Public Art Project in North Adams, MA this past fall.

“The solo show was comprised of several different pieces I had done, a documentation of data and time,” she said.

For her next project, O’Brien just completed a mail art exchange with two artists in the U.S. and three artists in Australia.

“Every two months we give each other assignments of a 3-D structure and a theme and all six of us make work and mail it to each other,” she said. “The three Americans are talking about doing a more in-depth collaboration and making a book.”

O’Brien, a book artist, started working at Moore in 2006. She currently teaches a book arts class at the College.

She earned her BA in Studio Arts and her high school teaching credential from Whittier College in California. She has an MFA in book arts/printmaking from The University of the Arts, where she currently teaches a professional practices course in the graduate program.

When she’s not teaching, O’Brien is the Director of Conservation at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

“While it’s a lot of work (teaching and working at the Historical Society], it’s a great partnership because we have great historical documents there and I can share the history of the books with the students,” she said. “I’ve also had a lot of interns from my students at Moore. They gain a greater appreciation for books and materials.”

Even though she was in the U.S. Air Force for six years, Rinda Edelman always knew she wanted to be an artist.

Originally from Colorado, Edelman’s mother was in the U.S. Army. When she retired, they moved to Hawaii, where Edelman graduated from high school and eventually joined the Air Force.

“I’ve always loved art,” she said. “Unfortunately there was not a lot of employment in Hawaii. Joining the Air Force kind of detoured me, but as soon as I got out I knew I wanted to do something in the art field.”

Today, Edelman, 30, is living her dream, enrolled as a graphic design major at Moore. She transferred to the College last fall from Delaware Technical & Community College in Dover, Delaware, where her husband Michael is stationed in the Air Force. The couple have two young children.

“I originally started out as an interior design major at Del Tech but took a color and composition class and fell in love with it,” she said. “So I switched my major to ad design. It goes hand in hand with the graphic design program here at Moore.”

Edelman came to Moore after two of her professors at Del Tech – Joyce Newcomb and Donna Felton – encouraged her to visit the campus and take a tour.

“I came to Moore and really fell in love with the atmosphere and the environment,” she said. “I absolutely love my classes and especially enjoyed a book arts class my first semester. It really opened me up to new things I hadn’t done before, which is another thing I love about the classes here.”

Even though she’s a few years older than most of the students at Moore, Edelman said she never feels out of place because everyone is friendly.

“I’ve met a couple of students my age,” she said. “I feel like everyone at Moore is very talented so the age gap doesn’t really factor in.”

Commuting from Dover each day for classes can be difficult, but Edelman said her husband is very supportive of her decision to go back to school. And they get help from family and friends.

“My husband was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan several times in the past,” she said. “I was in the military for two of his deployments. It was very hard. But we had lots of help from co-workers. Now that we’re in Delaware it’s easier because we have family in Pennsylvania.”

When she’s not busy with her studies, Edelman works on her website on ETSY, where she sells decals (wall graphics) and hopes to eventually have her own design business. She said she learned discipline and time management during her time in the Air Force, skills that have been helpful when it comes to her work at Moore.

As Assistant Director of the Locks Career Center at Moore, Veronica Scarpellino provides important services to BFA students and alumnae, graduate students, and students completing certificates in Continuing Education as they pursue their career paths during college, in the transition to the work world, and throughout their professional lives.

It’s a big job, but Scarpellino brings a depth of knowledge from a career that has spanned many facets of the creative industries – a small business owner in Philadelphia coaching fine artists in their careers, an art gallery professional and director; a curator, a marketing consultant, a locally published writer; an architectural model maker; and a regionally and nationally exhibiting artist.

“I like helping creative people achieve success while they avoid reinventing the wheel, instilling professionalism but also creativity in areas that aren’t necessarily thought of as being creative, like a resume,” Scarpellino said. “To have a student leave my office and say, ‘I’m really excited about my resume,’ I know I’ve done my job.”

Before coming to Moore three years ago, Scarpellino owned her own company helping artists market themselves and set and achieve goals for their professional careers – in short, the business aspect of being an artist. It was a really good precursor to working at Moore, she said.

“After having my own business, I felt I could reach more people at Moore,” she said. “Every student must come through the Career Center before they can graduate – you have a greater potential for impact. You can make a difference.”

Another appealing aspect of Moore was the College’s focus on careers – every student must complete a required internship before graduation. In addition, the Career Center provides resume advice and career coaching, help with networking skills and job searches and exposure to industry best practices, in addition to other services.

“The focus on careers at Moore made me think the students would be receptive of working with us and that has been the case,” she said. “Also, being such a small school, we get to know our students. When there’s a job opportunity, we know off the top of our heads 10 people who would be a good fit.”

A recent highlight of working at Moore was the opportunity for Scarpellino to present a lecture at the Women’s Leadership Conference this fall. Titled “A Career of Creativity and Innovation,” the lecture was about ways to incorporate creativity and innovation into all aspects of one’s career.

“It was very gratifying to be able to communicate with a receptive room full of women – mostly current students and alumni,” she said.

When she’s not at work, Scarpellino -- who earned a BA in Studio Art from Monmouth University in New Jersey -- spends time on her own artwork. She creates found object sculpture using materials such as bird nests, mouse bones, machine molds and detritus from Philadelphia factories. She recently made a model bird house through a Continuing Education class at Moore.

“I very much concentrate on craftsmanship,” she said. “If it’s not well made then it’s not finished…I do try to put my sense of humor into the piece… a second way of looking at things that can make the viewer think, and then laugh.”

As a child, Stephanie Price ’13 always wanted to start her own magazine.

She finally got her chance after graduating from Moore with a BFA in Graphic Design.

“I had modeled in the past and was published in a few magazines that were privately owned by people like me,” she said. “I was like – I have skills as a designer, why can’t I do a magazine on my own?”

Today, Price is a freelance designer and also the sole founder, designer and creative director of NUMiNOUS magazine, a bi-monthly publication created by artists for artists and art enthusiasts. The magazine displays artwork from artists around the globe of every medium, from fashion design to photography to illustration.

The first issue, “The Surreal Issue,” was published in January and can be purchased through magcloud.com (digital or hard copy issue).

“The goal of the magazine is to spread the word about different artists and designers, both locally and across the country, and to inspire people to create things,” Price said.

According to a Website called ‘Otherwordly,’ “Numinous” describes an experience that makes you “fearful yet fascinated, awed yet attracted -- the powerful, personal feeling of being overwhelmed and inspired.”

“I really liked the definition of the word and it fit the feel for the magazine,” Price said.

She partnered with Mad Girl Productions, an entertainment and production company, to get the word out about the magazine. She also held a release party in January.

“We help promote each other through social media and events,” she said.

Attending Moore helped propel her dreams of starting a magazine forward, Price said. She learned a lot and had a great experience completing her required junior year internship at Inked magazine.

“I feel like Moore is definitely always there to help you,” she said. “Someone was always there to support me. Moore does a good job of helping out their students and there are lots of opportunities to take advantage of.”

The Philadelphia Art Commission this month approved sculptor Stephen Layne’s design for a public statue honoring the late boxer Joe Frazier, to be installed at the Xfinity Live center in South Philadelphia.

Layne, adjunct faculty of Illustration at Moore, was selected to design the 12-foot bronze monument that depicts Frazier’s infamous knockdown of Muhammad Ali in the 15th round of 1971’s “Fight of the Century.” The former heavyweight champ, who made Philadelphia his home, died in 2011.

“He was a very iconic Philadelphia figure who did a whole lot for the city,” Layne said. “I think most people will resonate with that moment in his career. I chose that [for the design] because I knew that people would relate to it the most.”

The statue will be built beginning in January, 2014 and take about a year to complete.

Layne’s project has been the subject of a December article in The Philadelphia Inquirer and a recent Comcast SportsNet documentary, among other press.

Layne has done sculptures of boxers before, not for commission but as pieces he has shown in galleries in New York. He has received awards from the National Sculpture Society and Allied Artists of America.

“This all came to the attention of a local gallery in Philadelphia and they brought up my name to the committee to elect a sculptor to do this [Joe Frazier] project,” he said. “To be chosen for this honor is great. Generally I’m not a commissioned artist. I’m usually a gallery artist by choice, but when I heard of this project, this was one I really wanted.”

A recreational boxer in his early 20s, Layne has spent his whole life in Philadelphia.He earned his BFA in Sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and has taught at PAFA and the University of the Arts.

He came to Moore this semester through a recommendation from a friend who used to teach at the College and thought he would be a good fit.

“I was told that Moore has a very strong Illustration department and that drew me to teaching here,” he said. “I teach life drawing. The students are outstanding and professional and it’s a very comfortable environment. I really like it here.”

When it came to her artwork, Bentley, an Art History alumna, would often stop working on projects if she didn’t feel they were going in the right direction.

In an effort to combat that “perfectionist urge,” she started Bird in the Grass, Bear in the Cave, a “painting a day” experiment as a New Year’s resolution for 2014.

“Doing a painting each day was a way to make sure that something got finished every day,” she said. “Working on a small scale, quickly, with the intention of creating something different every day for a full year was rejuvenating.”

To ensure some accountability, Bentley published images of each watercolor painting daily on a public blog, Bird in the Grass, Bear in the Cave. So far, she has one for every day in January.

Each painting in the series draws from “a personal language I’ve been cultivating over the last few years, which pulls from my own vivid dreams and nightmares, as well as my personal study of totem animals, or spirit animals, and spiritual healing,” Bentley said.

She plans to circulate a book of all of her paintings at the end of the year.

When she’s not working with watercolors, Bentley enjoys card making and letter writing. Last year, she put together a collaborative project called The Snail Mail Manifesto, which explores the importance of letter writing in the Digital Age.

“I sent out invitations online and in the mail asking people to respond to questions like, ‘What was the best piece of mail you ever received and why?’ and asked people to mail me direct responses or visual interpretations of these questions,” she said. “Jacqueline Maloney ’11 sent me a box full of envelopes because her favorite part about getting a letter was opening the mailbox and seeing the envelope for the first time.”

Bentley collected all of the responses and in June of 2013 created a booklet and mailed it out to the participants. The project and images of the cards she makes is documented on another blog, The Snail Mail Manifesto.

“Card making and letter writing is important to me as a philosophical and political act,” she said. “Life is too fast, and although I use digital/social media to facilitate conversations and collaboration, I think that letter writing needs to be saved as an endangered species. My goal for this spring is to open a shop online to sell a selection of my cards.”

Not one to rest on her laurels, Bentley is already hard at work on yet another collaborative project – a poetry swap. Like the snail mail project, she plans to start it as a digital project and then mail a hard copy when it’s finished.

“I like using social media to organize people that I meet and to find other people who are interested in working on collaborative projects,” she said.

For Bentley, Moore College of Art & Design was a place “where I was able to do a lot of experiments to figure out what worked for me and what did not,” she said.

“…It was imperative to have access to a web of different artists, art historians and fellow students to draw from. It is that connection, that network, which is still crucial for me in creating projects like The Snail Mail Manifesto.”

As the new Alumni Association President at Moore, Cathey White ‘96 is interested in getting more alumni to give back to the College.

“Being a first generation, low-income student, I realize my experience at Moore changed my entire life’s path,” she said. “…I want to give back to the College because I feel it is so important to recognize the gift that Moore gave me. The ability to critically think, accept criticism, problem solve, be creative, articulate and be confident are many of the skills that Moore gave me. These skills are an integral part of my life and career today.”

White, an artist, educator and Philadelphia native, received a BFA in Fine Arts from Moore in 1996.

She works with The Philadelphia Education Fund, a non-profit that advocates for public education equity. She believes education is essential to changing and creating success among under-served communities and works to help these individuals gain access to higher education.

White is a member of the (no name) Art Group and has participated in their exhibitions held throughout Philadelphia. She has also completed commissioned artwork for The Joseph Anthony Spa and Salon in Glenn Mills, Endo Pharmaceuticals and The Brown Betty Boutique in Northern Liberties. White was also one of 12 artists selected to design and paint a large-scale boot for Moore’s Footsteps 160th anniversary celebration. Most recently, she has shown work at the Liz Afif Gallery in Old City.

White said she’s excited to work with Moore leadership as well as fellow alumni in her new role as president.

“I really want to get more young alumni into the habit of getting involved and being philanthropic,” she said. “A $20 donation is very valuable when every person gives. I challenge every alumna to make a minimum $20 donation to the Annual Fund this year. Moore truly is a lifelong resource and I hope that alumni stay connected no matter what their path beyond Moore.”

One way to stay connected is to attend this year’s Moore:Time Reunion and small…but not restricted Reception on Saturday, February 15, 2014 at the College.

“I think the reunion is a great way to come back to Moore and see what’s going on, reconnect with other alumni, make new friends and network,” she said. “It’s a really great time to step back into the past and relive for a day how much fun talking, creating and interacting with other women artists was and still is!”

There’s still time to register for the Moore: Time Reunion. Visit here today!

As an Admissions Recruiter at Moore, Eleanor Farley spends most of her time visiting high school art classes, community colleges and participating in portfolio review events. Her territory includes all of Maryland and Virginia.

While she’s on the road several days a week, she enjoys making “small works” out of paper and clay that are now being featured in the “Focus on Moore Staff” display case near the dining hall at the College.

“I make little sculptures out of paper clay that are then painted with acrylic and nail polish and I also make cut-out sketchbook drawings (drawn in ink and then water colored),” Farley said. “All of my work is based on household objects, food and pop-culture characters. The pieces in ‘small works’ represent a visual vocabulary that are frequently referenced in larger artworks.”

Farley also creates larger, abstract works usually built out of found objects or refuse and then covered with different materials, from sequins to band aids. In addition, she makes large-scale collages out of drawings or found objects, such as thumb tacks, glitter or magazine clippings.

“My work started in college when I was pretty tight on funds and I’d go through the studio building and collect thrown out materials or recycle my old sculptures to make new ones,” she said. “[My work] is about excess and pop-culture and how it builds up physically and psychologically.”

Farley graduated in 2010 with a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Before coming to Moore, she was a pre-school art teacher in Chicago. She was also a nanny throughout her time at MICA. Originally from Richmond, VA, she has been working at Moore since August, 2012.

“I really enjoy the travel aspect of my job,” she said. “It has been really exciting to work at an arts institution with people who are a little bit more like-minded. And I get to meet a variety of students and counsel them through the portfolio aspect of their application.”

Laura Petrovich-Cheney recently returned from a
residency in the Arctic Circle.

The idea for the residency originated from a class she completed as part of the MFA
in Studio Art program at Moore.

“In the summer of 2011, while in Jennie
Shanker’s "Professional Practice" class, I had to begin an application for a
residency as a practice for my professional life as an artist,” she said.
“After hours of researching and daydreaming I selected the most adventurous and
seemingly improbable residency – one that took place in a 160-foot tall ship
that travels the waters in the Arctic Circle.” (www.thearcticcircle.org).

The Arctic Circle is an annual expeditionary
residency program. It brings together international artists of all disciplines
-- scientists, architects and educators -- who collectively explore remote and
fascinating destinations aboard a specially outfitted sailing vessel.

After graduating from Moore, Petrovich-Cheney
decided to formally apply for the residency. The only part of the assignment
left to complete was to write the project proposal.

“My project for this residency was to walk and
only leave footprints – impermanent artifacts in order to remind us that we can
explore, engage with and seek out the beauty and mysteries of the natural
world, all the while mindful that we are guests and stewards of a planet worth
saving for current and future generations to experience,” she said.

Petrovich-Cheney documented her works with a
one-word poem, images and video.

The project was partially influenced by
Petrovich-Cheney’s experience at the Burren College of Art in Ireland, a
required month-long international residency as part of the MFA program.

“I studied the British artist Richard Long and
it was his work that inspired my performance piece in the Arctic Circle,” she
said. “I feel that without my education at Moore, I would not have had the
confidence, skills and resources to apply for that residency.”

Petrovich-Cheney
is a full-time practicing, professional artist who lives and works in Asbury
Park, NJ. She also maintains an
organic vegetable garden and flower gardens,a small
orchard and several colonies of honeybees.

Her work focuses on resurrecting debris found in
the national environment. She upcycles and repurposes washed up boats, hollowed
tree trunks, abandoned wasps’ nests, rain water and her honeybees’ wax to
create sculptures and mixed media work.

During her walks on her trip to the Arctic,
Petrovich-Cheney collected four cases
of plastic garbagewhich she had shipped home for her
practice.

“It will be interesting to see what I do with
it,” she said. “Probably an installation
but maybe a sculpture…”

Petrovich-Cheney graduated from Moore in 2011 as part of the inaugural class of
students in the MFA in Studio Art program. She earned her BA from Dickinson College
and an MS from Drexel University.

Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues
including the George Segall Gallery, Monmouth Museum, Delaware Art Museum and
the Shore Institute of Contemporary Art. She is a member of The Sculptors
Guild-NYC, a fellow at the A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn and a member of the
Philadelphia Sculptors group as well.

In addition,
Petrovich-Cheney is a National Board Certified Art Educator working with
children from kindergarten to middle school. She presents lectures on art
education nationally.

She said she chose to
come to Moore for her MFA degree because of its flexibility, which allowed her
to continue to work full time as an art teacher.

“This was a three year, evening and summer intensive program so I could pay my
bills,” she said. “I could not afford to quit my job and go to grad school
again.”

She said she really enjoyed the close-knit atmosphere of Moore.

“We really became such an intimate group of people and got to know the
professors well,” she said. “They had such a huge influence on me. If I had
been one of 200, I don’t think I would
have felt so special. The experience gave me the confidence to go out into this
really challenging world of contemporary arts."

Samantha Jauch joined
Student Government because she is passionate about working with other students
to improve Moore. The senior PDA major became President so she could have an
even greater impact.

“I really liked the idea
of being involved in all of the committees on Student Government,” she said. “I
really wanted to be a part of everything.”

Student Government
committees include the Student-Run Gallery, networking, community, programming
and public relations. As president, Jauch sits in on all the committees and
helps make decisions.

She also represents the
student perspective on the College Planning Committee.

“[Being on the college
planning committee]has taught me how to present myself professionally outside
of my peers and to think of the college as a whole…not just smaller issues that
the students may have but issues that the college has and what the institution
wants to achieve.”

In high school, Jauch was
a varsity swimmer and didn’t have time to get involved in a leadership role.
That changed when she came to Moore. She spent one year as a resident assistant
before joining Student Government.

“When I got here I
realized I like volunteering, but it’s hard to volunteer a lot when you’re in school,” she said. “If you want a day
to day thing, student leadership is the best way to get involved. Being in a
leadership role I’ve learned how to communicate and get things done. It has
made me more confident and organized and cured any fear I ever had of public
speaking.”

Jauch is currently working to recruit new members to bring fresh ideas to Student Government. Several
information sessions were held this month. Next week, Student Government will
be collecting sneakers and money for a fundraiser for Back on My Feet, an
organization that uses running to help those experiencing homelessness.

When she’s not busy with
Student Government, Jauch is a freelance photographer. She’s also working on
getting her sky diving license. “With the license you can teach or sky dive
competitively or just for leisure,” she said. “I did my first jump in high
school and I want to be able to do it more often and go solo.”

Jauch said she learned
about Moore through a friend who attended the College and she was able to come
and visit multiple times before applying.

“I liked what I saw,” she
said. “PDA is kind of a small major but it’s a really good major to be in.
There are not a lot of students per teacher and the faculty is really hands on
and really great artists too.”

Jauch said her favorite thing about
Moore is the friendships she has developed with other students.

“You make friends that you
know you’ll have for life. The relationships you build here - being a close
knit women’s college – you automatically have a lot in common with everyone.
It’s a comfortable environment and it’s very empowering.”

On any given week as a freelance illustrator and storyboard artist in Southern
California, she works on a variety of projects, from concept art to
storyboarding, as well as creative consulting and
finished illustrations in the worlds of entertainment, fashion, television,
film, publishing – even the video game industry.

Most recently, Zelnick, who graduated from Moore in 1989 with a fashion
illustration degree, did all the promotional art for the cast of NBC’s new
series "Dracula", starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the legendary
vampire.

“This was an unusual project for NBC in that they had a larger than
normal art budget and wanted to create
imagery that didn’t look like the usual promo for a TV show,” she said. “That
brought us a challenging problem to solve. We
thought wouldn’t it be great to make something that felt like a steam punk
Dracula and something that felt a bit like tarot cards and fashion editorial?
We combined those three aspects into a holy trinity of fashion, tarot and
Victorian style.”

Some of Zelnick’s other client projects include Mattel, Proctor
and Gamble, Grande Marnier liqueur and Ghirardelli chocolate. She also specializes in Key Art, the art
of movie marketing campaigns, including movie posters, one-sheets, trailers,
teasers, television spots and outdoor and internet advertising.

Zelnick attributes her career success to name recognition and
having a good professional agent. “It becomes a full time job to promote
yourself,” she said. “Being in connection with somebody that can help you do
that is a smart thing.”

She is represented by the woman-owned and operated agency Famous Frames, which
specializes in storyboards, shooting boards, concept and comp art, illustration
and full-service cinematic, animatic and
board-o-matic production.

“I love the variety my career brings and the fact that on Monday I could be
working on a car commercial, Tuesday might be a film or a TV project and by
Wednesday I might be doing in-store designs for a fashion company,” she said.
“Each day is something different and I enjoy being my own boss as opposed to
clocking in under someone else every day.”

Zelnick, who addressed Moore students at Convocation 2011, recently published a
book titled, “The Art School Grad’s Guide to the Real World,” available through
Amazon.com.

“It’s essentially a small volume of tricks to the trade,” she said. “Key things
I have realized like having a strong handshake, making eye
contact, you don’t really learn in life drawing class. While I found that you
come out of art school with a great education, it’s the people skills and job
hunting skills that sometimes need to be further developed. So I put together a
little book that would emphasize those skills.”

As a student, Zelnick said she was attracted to Moore because of the history of
the school and its prime location in the city. “I thought it sounded like a
cool place, I took a tour and fell in love with the neighborhood,
people and work I saw in the studio rooms and on the walls,” she said. “It
emotionally felt right. It was comfortable, like home.
Moore was a wonderful experience.”

So when it came time to choose a junior year internship, she looked towards the United Arab Emirates.

With the help of the Penny Fox Internship Fellowship, Thomas, a fashion major, was able to travel to the city of Sharjah, near Dubai, for the summer and work as an intern for Aiisha Ramadan, a local designer.

I’ve been inspired by the Middle East since high school -- the art, the people and the culture,” Thomas said. “When it came time to research internships, I looked to the UAE first because I knew how much it was advancing in fashion and art. I definitely wanted to go over there and work closely with a designer. I found out about Aiisha, connected to her aesthetic and wanted to work for her.”

As an intern, Thomas was responsible for overseeing operations when Ramadan was away, working on her look book and pricing the collection. She was also able to choose fabrics for designs and name the dresses in Ramadan’s Spring/Summer 2014 collection.

“The experience was really great,” Thomas said. “I was able to get a sense of how a small company is run and work closely with the designer, who was a lot of help.”

As a woman, living in Sharjah was an eye-opening experience, Thomas said.

“It was very conservative compared to Dubai,” she said. “It’s one of the historical districts and one of the most conservative areas in the UAE."

While she had one other female friend at work, Thomas said she was on her own most of the time.

“It could be very lonely, especially during Ramadan (a month of fasting for Muslims) when everyone was fasting during the day,” she said. “And when it came time to break the fast, everyone would be with their family and friends eating at “iftar” dinner (breaking of fast) and I ate alone at Pizza Hut.”

But despite the challenges of living abroad, Thomas was able to adapt well to her environment and become more independent.

“I’m always open to new things,” she said. “This was the second time I’ve been far away from home so I’m used to it.”

As the recipient of the Sis Grenald Leadership Fellowship, Thomas traveled to Palestine the summer after her sophomore year to teach art to children in a refugee camp.

“I’ve always been interested in the Middle East,” she said. “If I wasn’t a fashion design major I’d probably be doing Middle Eastern studies.”

As a fashion designer, Thomas naturally gravitates towards Eastern influences in her work, which she describes as, “very regal, very elegant, and a little conservative yet mixed with a Western modern edge.”

Thomas said she hopes to one day return to the United Arab Emirates and gain more experience working there. For now, she’s looking forward to the spring Fashion Show at Moore, where she said her senior collection will be inspired by Dubai.

Philadelphia Magazine is searching for the next
great Philadelphia fashion designer. And one of them could be a Moore graduate.

Fashion Design alumnae Victoria Wright ’12 (right) and
Megan Swansen ’08 were two of eight designers chosen from countless portfolios
and resumes to create one original, ready-to-wear garment to grace the pages of
the September issue of the magazine.

The public voted online for their favorite look and the winning look and prize will be announced on October 6, 2013.

Wright submitted sketches for a dress, a top and a
coat. The magazine asked Wright to design the coat, a 1960s “Brigitte Bardot”-inspired
wool herringbone swing coat with quilted calfskin leather sleeves. For Swansen,
the magazine chose a long paneled
silk dress with g­athers, cutouts and a recycled-leather belt.

Wright, a freelance fashion designer, said she learned
about the contest through a stylist she worked with, and decided to apply.

“I’m pretty excited to be chosen, it’s a big deal,”
she said. “It’s kind of weird and surreal that I just graduated a year ago and
I have a look in the magazine. It’s the highlight of my design career thus far.”

Swansen, a stylist for Anthropologie’s web studio, found
out about the contest through a friend. She, too, was excited to see her look
in the magazine.

“It was really cool, especially since they gave
each of us a full page,” she said. “It was fun to see everything styled from
bigger named designers and photographers. I was very pleased with the way it
came out.”

Wright and Swansen knew of each other, but were
unaware they had both entered the contest until they saw the magazine. “I think
it’s cool,” Swansen said. “It’s good to see a couple of Moore girls in there.”

Both girls said they wanted to be
fashion designers from a young age. Wright attended the Summer Art & Design
Institute (SADI) at Moore as a teenager, which led her to enroll in the BFA
program.

"I liked the teachers and the atmosphere,” she said. “But the real draw was the
smaller class sizes and I thought there was a lot of one on one attention with
your mentors and teachers. I really liked the whole learning environment. It’s
a great school.”

Swansen, a Philadelphia native,
said she always knew she wanted to go to Moore and it was the only college she
applied to.

“I liked the idea of the small school and the all women’s college was very
appealing because I think - especially in a tight knit group - women supporting
each other in the arts is a very positive thing.”

She took
classes in the Young Artists Workshop, attended the Summer Art & Design
Institute (SADI), earned her BFA in Fine Arts, and completed her
Post-Baccalaureate and Graduate Studies in Art Education at Moore.

Oh, and she
also took Continuing Education classes.

“Moore is my
home away from home,” she said. “I know the security guards and the teachers,
even ones that I haven’t had. I love the location of Moore and I love the
camaraderie that everyone has. I have so many friends and have made so many
connections here.”

Long, 29,
earned her BFA in 2007 as a Fine Arts major. “I had this grand idea that I was
going to be a beatnik artist living on the streets in some exotic country and
selling my artwork” – but a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis made her rethink
things, and ultimately led to a career in Art Education.

“I started working with individuals for an organization
supporting adults with various abilities/disabilities and realized how much
limitation can inspire creativity and a desire to adapt in order to
participate, not just with art, but in everyday life,” she said.

“It snapped me out of feeling
sorry for myself and pushed me into wanting to inspire and motivate others.
I realized I wanted to go into teaching. It wasn't until I took Art
Education at Moore that I learned two of the most important lessons of my life:
that every moment is a teachable moment, and that everyone is capable of
anything.”

Long
completed her Post Baccalaureate degree in Art Education in 2010 and graduated
with her MA in Art Education with an
emphasis in special populations this past summer.

“I wanted to
do the MA program because it was for special needs students,” she said.
“Moore’s was a highly talked about program in this area.Everything about the program made sense to
me.I already had made adaptive tools
for the people I worked with. Everything I was already doing could be made
better and was made better through the program.”

Today, Long teaches
high school art part-time at the Multi-Cultural Academy Charter School in
Philadelphia. She also works at a puppet shop called Character Translations in
Norristown.

In her spare
time, she runs a Facebook group called Philadelphia Artist’s Exchange that
allows artists to buy/sell/trade or give away art items, from brand new to
half-used tubes of paint, etc.

“It has
helped a lot in collecting materials for my students and connecting with
artists all over Philadelphia,” she said.

Long credits
her experience at Moore with helping her find her voice and gain confidence in
her abilities. The fact that it’s an all women’s institution was a bonus, she
said.

“I didn’t
have a voice when I first came to Moore,” Long said. “I think mine built up
over time. I don’t know if I would have had the same confidence level if there
were males in the classroom. I gained a lot of confidence from working with
other women and empowering each other. Now I can talk to anyone.”

Long said
she is a strong supporter of the Art Education program at Moore.

“It’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” she said. “The
instructors are amazing people that I still stay connected to. They share so
much and are really accessible.

“I’m pretty
much the Moore ambassador. I told Lynne [Horoschak, program director for the MA
in Art Education] to call me when they get a doctorate program together.”

Every
few months for two weeks you’ll find Kuder perched on a ladder, hammering,
drilling holes or painting the walls in The Galleries at Moore.

Kuder,
a Curatorial Studies alumni, enjoys working part-time in the galleries, helping
to install and de-install exhibitions while working with artists and students.

“Since
I was a kid I always worked with tools, helping my dad around the house,” she
said. “I think I was the only one in our graduating class [of curatorial
studies majors] that chose to minor in Fine Arts-3D. I took small metals and
welding. I like constructing things and making stuff.”

Kuder
began her time in The Galleries as a work-study student after transferring to
Moore as a sophomore from the University of Houston. After graduating from
Moore, she stayed on in The Galleries.

“Since I was a Curatorial Studies major at the time, I figured I would work in
the galleries and observe, see what I could do,” she said. “The Mary McFadden
exhibit was up and they had me touch up paint and dust mantles and eventually
it just bloomed into more responsibility.”

Any
given week on the job can involve de-installing the current show, packing up
the art and returning it to the artist or institution, cleaning the gallery,
painting the walls – all before the date that a new artist is coming in with
his or her new artwork. Then Kuder, along with two other installers, unpacks
the new artwork, is given a floor layout, gets all the hardware together and
begins installing the new show.

Her
favorite part of the installation process, Kuder said, is “meeting the artist
and talking to him or her about their art, getting a sense of what they want
out of it, and hopefully we hit that on target,” she said. “Some artists are
really demanding and some are flexible and are looking for us to help answer
their questions. We don’t decide for them, we just guide them. It’s their art
and how it sits is their decision [and the Gallery director’s].”

Kuder
learned about Moore while attending a portfolio day in Houston, Texas in search
of a College that offered curatorial studies at the BFA level. There were none.
Moore’s is the first undergraduate program of its kind in the country.

“When
I found Moore, I said I’m definitely going there,” she said. ``If this is
something you want to do as a career [curatorial studies], it’s a good
foundation versus just a background in fine arts. I wanted to work with artists
within a gallery and be part of a group that puts it all together…I liked the
group we had here. It was a small class and we wrestled and played and had
ideas and pushed down walls. Most of my group was pretty ambitious. We were all
likeminded and go-getters.”

Kuder
is still a go-getter today. Besides her work at Moore, she holds down three
other jobs, including a freelance writing job for a private art collector
opening up a gallery.

“No
matter where I go, I always want to keep my hands in the arts,” she said.
“Working at the gallery keeps me there and my freelance work keeps me there. It
taps into something that answers an itch that I have.”

Kuder
finds it particularly gratifying helping artists and students “think around the
corners” when it comes to their artwork.

“I think that installation is the last thing people think about and it should
really be the first,” she said. “I’m not looking for my name on the wall. I’m
looking at someone else’s name on the wall. That’s where I’m a regular Joe. I’m
not looking to make a splash.”

As
the Rochelle F. Levy Director and Chief Curator of The Galleries at Moore,
Kaytie Johnson is usually focused on the “now.” But she wore her “art
historian” hat recently while revisiting the unorthodox artistic practices of
Mexico City in the 1990s.

Johnson traveled to Mexico City late last month to
carry out research associated with the development of an exhibition
at The Galleries at Moore that
will focus on the pivotal role and indelible impact that the city’s
alternative, artist-run art spaces played, and continue to play, in shaping the
city’s contemporary art landscape and legacy.

“Most of the exhibitions that have focused upon this particular
decade have not adequately contextualized the work that was being made
during this critical time period. And, for the most part, none have
sufficiently emphasized the pivotal role that 'alternative' and artist-run
spaces had in shaping the city's cultural fabric. These spaces, and the
art created during this time, emerged from a very specific economic, political
and social context, not from a vacuum," she said. "This will be
the first exhibition to present a comprehensive account of what artists were
making, and making happen, during the 1990s."

The Galleries were
awarded a $20,000 planning grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
(PCAH) to support travel and research associated with the development of the
exhibition. Johnson plans to apply for a project grant to make the show a
reality in fall 2015.

“This trip was part of the 'discovery phase' of the
exhibition planning process,” Johnson said. “While in Mexico City I dug through museum archives and personal collections,
and also met with some of the artists and individuals who were an integral part
of the 1990s scene in order to hear their perspective and memories of that
time. These are the first steps toward constructing a more accurate
cultural narrative of the decade, one that's based upon first-person accounts.
My goal as the curator of the exhibition is to express the complexity and
origins of contemporary Mexican art on its own terms."

The 1990s was the most tumultuous
decade in Mexican history since the Mexican Revolution ended in 1920. Marked by
the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), political
assassinations, a chronic rise in violence and an economic crisis, the stage
was set for unorthodox, “do-it-yourself” art practices that profoundly altered
the dynamics of the local art scene, Johnson said.

“Many of the 'alternative,' artist-run spaces that
were formed during this time were created as a way to survive the climate of
intolerance, repression and indifference that defined the decade. It was
virtually impossible for emerging artists, to find a place in the dynamic of
established art institutions, so they created and ran their own spaces.
This generation of artists weren't excluded, necessarily. I think
it's more accurate to say they were ignored."

Johnson
had wanted to do an exhibition about this time period in Mexico for a long
time. She formed an advisory team of artists and curators from Mexico and
the U.S. that will meet in Philadelphia in November to discuss the scope of the
exhibit and interact with members of Philadelphia’s
artist-run spaces in search of ideas for synergy
and collaboration. Johnson also plans to work with International
House Philadelphia on a film and video series that will run
concurrently with the exhibition.

“2014 marks the 30th anniversary of NAFTA.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is back in power in Mexico.
We're just emerging from a global economic crisis. And, in light of the
current emphasis on socially engaged art practices, the work and activities of
the artists and artist–run spaces in Mexico City during this decade are especially
relevant now. The time is right for a show with this scope and
focus."

As the multimedia producer at Moore, Dave Rizzio helps tell the story of the College.

Rizzio, of South Philadelphia, creates videos and communication pieces for
the marketing/communications department. A staff member since March, 2012, he
earned his BA in Graphic Design & Traditional Sculpture from Alfred
University in New York.

Rizzio has worked in design firms, advertising
agencies, private not-for-profits, and even an international heavy manufacturing corporation. Moore is his first foray into the higher education
sector.

“I like working at Moore because I’m able to tell all the amazing
stories that are happening here,” he said. “I enjoy capturing the inspiring
stories of the students, faculty and staff.”

Rizzio is also an amateur
photographer, capturing the inner workings of Philadelphia skateboarding
culture, an interest that he and his friends have shared for years.

“All
my friends growing up were skateboarders, and I wasn’t really a very good
skateboarder so I started taking pictures,” he said.

After college,
Rizzio and his friends returned to the Philadelphia area, around the same time
that the city prohibited skateboarding at Love Park. The city built an asphalt
slab underneath I-95 in FDR Park in an effort to supply an alternative
location.

“A bunch of my friends, not really knowing what the city was
going to do, in the dark of night drove pickup trucks full of cinder blocks and
concrete and built our own concrete skate park, filled with a much better
variety of terrain,” he said. “The first 8 to 10 years of the park’s existence I
was down there taking pictures, mixing concrete and getting blisters.”

A few of his skate boarding friends got together and secured a book deal for
a visual history of the park. FDR Skatepark: A Visual History, was
published last year by Schiffer Publishing LTD and features five of Rizzio’s
photographs. The book is currently sold on Amazon.com and in Borders
bookstores.

“I was very excited to see my work in print,” Rizzio said. “I
only ever took pictures for myself and my friends so it was interesting to be
called upon… It’s fun to hang out with all these people and partake in their
experience and document it. The book is a mixture of work by professional
photographers and others like me.”

While the skate park is still thriving
today, Rizzio doesn’t visit as often because most of his friends have moved out
of town. He is also busy running after his two-year-old daughter, Greta, with
his wife, Katie.

“It’s a whole new crop of skateboarders now making their own memories,” he
said.

Rizzio’s work is currently featured in the “Focus on Moore Staff"
display case near the dining hall at the College.

The high school junior from Audubon, NJ has taken the same class - Fashion Concepts & Illustration - through Moore’s Young Artists Workshop program for the past four years.

“I started the program because I was interested in the combination of fashion and drawing,” Froonjian said. “As I became more interested I took the class again and again. I found it was something I really liked but my ability didn’t match the level of interest I had in it. So I’ve been honing my skills in these classes. I feel like my drawings have improved since I started.”

More than 1,000 students participate in Moore’s youth art programs each year, with boys and girls in grades 1 – 12 attending Saturday classes in the fall and spring and weekdays during the summer. The College’s small size and personalized attention from faculty contribute to the popularity of the youth programs.

Despite taking the same fashion class more than once, Froonjian said she always learns something new.

“One year the teacher might focus on the body, form, proportion, and then another year it might be about fabric rendering or different customers you’re designing for,” she said. “I never get bored in class. They give you a lot of different things to draw inspiration from. I’ve done lots of different projects. New things always come up.”

Amy Pendola ’05, a Moore alumna who teaches the Fashion Concepts & Illustration class, said it’s not unusual for students to take the same class again and again.

“There’s always room for improvement when you’re sketching,” she said. “Students don’t repeat their ideas. They take them further. Sarah enjoys drawing the figure. I’ve been pushing her for more attention to detail and pushing her colors in the renderings of her fabrics.”

This year, Froonjian’s fashion illustration was chosen to grace the cover of the Youth Programs Fashion Show program. The show will take place during Youth Programs Friends & Family Day this Friday from 11 am – 4 pm at the College.

“It’s really exciting,” she said. “I was honored to be chosen.”

Froonjian said her interest in drawing was sparked in the fourth grade, when she started watching Project Runway with her mother.

“I found clothes interesting and just started drawing them,” she said. “Personal style is important to me, how I express myself. This [class] is an extension of that. I may not wear the garments themselves but it’s another creative outlet…over the years my ideas have solidified whereas they were vague before.”

Froonjian, whose older sister has also taken YAW classes at Moore, said she likes how immersive the program is.

“You meet a ton of new people, but it’s not just a one week summer camp,” she said. “A five-week program five days a week is pretty long and intense. It gives you a chance to really build something. The experience that the teachers bring to the program is great.”

Froonjian said she’s still unsure whether she’ll apply to art school or not, but if she does, “I have a ton of artwork I can choose from in my portfolio.”